Split into two parts, the Philadelphia hour is very average (if you've seen The Wire or any one of the billion cop docs that come out of the US, you've seen it all before) but the Johannesburg section is much more enlightening, following the vigilante 'security firms' around and seeing how impoverished and brutal life can be for the poor of the city. Theroux himself could be absent for both at it's what we see not what he says that matters here.

Philadelphia part was way over the top and ridiculously one sided and we were able to get the picture in Johannesburg after a minute. Mostly boring with a few insightful things but really not worth watching.

Not even quirky style of Louis Theroux could make these documentaries any brighter. Life in the streets of Philadelphia seems depressing, but I was really shocked by hopelessness, poverty and violence in Johannesburg. Unusually heavy Theroux documentary.

Insight to the violence and insecurity of our times.

Two hours is far too brief a look at something so vast and intangible, but the filmmakers do their best to narrow the focus. Louis's faux-naïveté is the perfect lens through which to view these people's situations: they're often built upon and perpetuated by such ridiculous premises (like "stop snitching") that they crumble under even a cursory and ostensibly uninformed examination. There are no real solutions proposed, but then what possible solutions are there?

Louis Theroux's deceitful child-like interview style allows him to ask some basic but tough questions and it works wonderfully here. He manages to probe those who's lives are connected with gang life by simply asking "why do you do it?" And "why don't you tell the police about who you shot you?" Yes, we know the answer, and so does Louis: the unspoken code of never ratting on anyone. What's interesting is how the interviewees handle such questions that I'm sure they never even ask themselves.