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Released by Magnet Films/Magnolia Films
Released on Septemper 25th, 2012
Directed by Stephen K. Bannon
Featuring Andrew Breitbart, David Horowitz, Brandon Darby
Purchase From Amazon
The Movie:
It's an election year, so why not celebrate with a political documentary? While we're at it, I'll take a walk in the shoes of the other side for a change. That's right, in the interest of being fair, I do have to admit that this documentary, presented by and starring recently deceased conservative writer Andrew Breitbart, definitely comes from a political point of view that I do not share. That said, I do realize that 99% of politics is a game, and one that fascinates me. Documentaries and cinema fascinate me as well, so I feel confident I can safely grade this film on how it well it presents its message, regardless of my own opinions. Being cynical enough about my own side will definitely aid in my sympathy to the other side's case.
The film is shot edited extremely well, and presented in a well-structured way. They slowly build their premise to a climax, and present the sum of their thesis in a big way at the end. This is done with talking head commentary from Breitbart, and other conservative pundits, writers, bloggers, and an FBI informant who was involved with the arrest of two protestors. Their words are places against lots and lots of footage from all of the major news networks, tons of random footage from inside the Occupy protests, which seems to have come from numerous sources. One main weakness makes itself apparent here, if you're a news junkie, like myself, and watch all of the major networks, or even if you only just watch one occasionally, most of this footage you've already seen many times over. The talking heads routinely talk about how the "mainstream" media, a category in which they seem to include conservative Fox News, never covered any of this information, while showing us that these stations covered the information they're presenting. Why they did this, I don't really know.
To be honest, this documentary does play as a quite interesting overview of the movement. However, it seems to cover only one aspect of it. It focuses in on the annoying college liberals, and the ranting and raving radical hippies and crust punks. Now, I'm a liberal, and even I find these people naive, and annoying. The documentary does a good job of pointing out this fact, a fact that every single liberal, conservative, Democrat, and Republican knows… That college liberals who are just learning about new philosophies can have some naive, misguided Ideals, and that radicals and crust punks can have some stupid, stupid ideas. The problem is, remember that news footage they were playing for us over and over again? All of that coverage showed all the other people at the protest. Yes these fringe elements existed, and yes they're loud and annoying…but they weren't all that's there.
And the documentary does acknowledge that there were others there. They point out the unions, who were indeed a strong presence, they even point out tons of the regular folks who showed up. The documentary then shifts gears for a bit, taking us back to the 30's, showing us a labor strike involving Saul Alinsky, and then the 60's and 70's when the Black Panthers and SDS were active. They actually give a pretty good overview of the era's radicalism, and there's quite a bit of interesting footage, a well put together segment. Then we shift back to Occupy, and the thesis is presented. It seems to be that since there are liberals, and since MSNBC is liberal, and college kids and hippies are stupid, and the Black Panthers existed…Then there must be a vast liberal conspiracy to overthrow the government. That's it. The film is well put together, and presents some very fascinating information, and in my opinion, ruins a pretty good run by overstating its findings.
Video/Audio/Extras:
There are no extras to speak of on the disc, besides a trailer for the film. The film is presented in 16x9, with very sharp HD footage for the talking heads, and varying image quality due to the numerous sources that make up the bulk of the material. Everything from old newsreel footage, to cellphone cameras, to camcorders, to modern news cameras, so the quality is all over the place. Overall, this actually makes for a very interesting visual style, keeping the viewer's attention during the talkier parts. The disc only comes with a singular English 5.1 Dolby Digital track, with an option for Spanish subtitles.
The Final Word:
To be perfectly frank, the liberal here is going to recommend this flick. To liberals, conservatives, everyone. There's a lot of great footage, and interesting tidbits information throughout, but a build up to a conclusion that just doesn't add up. They put together a well done piece, that could have been a great investigative piece, but just tried to structure it to support the conclusion that they WANT it to have, not that it does have. They rightfully expose and condemn a dark part of the Occupy movement that had some dangerous, misguided ideas and was responsible for some sometimes severe destruction. Whether I agreed with elements of Occupy or not, the truth is the truth, and whether I agree with or even like these filmmakers or commentators, they do some journalism here. These things did happen, and the truth about any political movement should be of interest to all people interested in politics, from all sides. The truth is, yes the film takes a typical Conservative stance in the age of the blogosphere and blows something liberal out of proportion, the fact is there are tons of documentaries from my side of the fence that do the same thing to the conservatives. We always wish that people on the right would watch our documentaries, it's good for us to watch their's every once in a while. Yes, it's flawed, and yes I disagree with its conclusions, but this has enough going for it for me to say it's worth a watch.
