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Friday, December 14, 2012
MOVIE REVIEW
The Central Park Five
Their Story 23 Years Ago, With Enduring Horrors Now
Yusef Salaam, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana and Kharey Wise in a photo taken
in October 2012. BlackFilm.com
by
Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
FOLLOW
Friday, December 14,
2012
Piercing and powerful, "The Central Park Five" shakes, shocks and stirs you to
outrage as the documentary gives five young black and Latino men a platform that
was severely diluted by a vitriolic mainstream media 23 years ago in New York
City. Raymond Santana, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Kharey Wise and
Antron McCray were convicted in 1990 of a crime they didn't commit: the rape and
brutal beating of Trisha Meili, a white woman jogging in Central Park on April
19, 1989.
Directed by Sarah Burns, her husband David McMahon and her father Ken Burns, and
based on Ms. Burns' book, "The Central Park Five" opens with haunting audio of
Matias Reyes talking about how he violently attacked Ms. Meili on a fully
moonlit spring night. "There's no way these boys could have done this to
her," he says. It is a chilling revelation, one which stokes anger, horror
and sadness. Sadness at the realization that innocent young men, without
DNA evidence, bloodstains or scratches, are convicted. Innocence taken
from them. "The Central Park Five"
excoriates those who believed in the boys' guilt. The film casts a
light on the other victims of that awful night in 1989, making it clear that the five young men were
victims in addition to Ms. Meili -- but victims of overzealous press, police and
prosecutors.
Geography defines this fascinating and vital film, an essay about a devastating
rush to judgment and a frenzy of political pressure. The film, which
explores a racially tense New York City in a 1980 decade marred by explosive,
rising crime in the Big Apple, with such notorious figures like Bernhard Goetz,
who shot four black men who he said were about to threaten him, and other racial
violence against blacks in the areas of Howard Beach and Bensonhurst.
Constructed efficiently and clinically, "The Central Park Five" unwinds in
matter-of-fact investigatory dispatch, with news footage and interviews,
analyzing New York and the criminal justice system, as well as an indicting
media that demonized, tried and convicted the five young men in public before
they had their day in court. "The Central Park Five" however, is
the true day in court that these gentlemen never really had. All five
testify so profoundly and plainly. Their first-person accounts reveal the
unnerving (and unsurprising) truth about the police abuse and intimidation they
faced at a precinct -- for hours and hours, without sleep, food, bathroom breaks
-- before yielding to the relentless coercions.
As I watched this documentary I ached for these young men all over again.
(I got to know several of their family members during the trials in 1990.
I remember screaming in the courtroom when Mr. Richardson and Mr. Wise were
convicted.)
One of the year's
best films, the Burns-Burns-McMahon documentary is most effective and
vivid when we see and hear the young men's compelling and disturbing stories.
Each, teenagers at the time, spent years in prison -- ranging from six to
thirteen -- and are still outrageously having their civil suits against
New York City stalled, years after New York's Court of Appeals vacated their
convictions in 2002.
There are accompanying voices from activists, political figures, journalists.
All of the voices examine the New York media's -- and much of a fearful public's
-- relentless persecution of five innocent teenagers, laced with unvarnished
racist invective and stereotyping. Not unlike the notorious Scottsboro
case in the 1930s, this modern-day nightmare for five youngsters reverberates
throughout two hours, just a fraction of the time of their own years-long
ordeals.
"The Central Park Five" -- in which yours truly can briefly be seen in a grey
overcoat holding a white umbrella as part of a protest -- restores these men,
humanizing and vindicating them. The only regret about this formidable, devastating
documentary is that it came almost 24 years too late as an
antidote to the manipulated confessional videotapes that were the very lies that
several juries relied on.
"The Central Park Five", is not rated by the Motion
Picture Association Of America. The film's running time is one hour and
59 minutes.
COPYRIGHT 2012. POPCORNREEL.COM. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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