A fiery marriage of realism and expressionism.

Synopsis: A bunch of dirty, pink-o hippies are PUNISHED...in a park! Now honestly, the decision to film this as a straight documentary was a pretty inspired choice and the "acting" here is, in most cases, surprisingly effective and true to real life. My biggest problem is that it's so overtly one-sided (obviously) that the hippy protagonists become slightly different variations on the same one-note character. Even if you agree with some of their politics, they're surprisingly hard to "root for".

Surprising that a movie siding w noxious 60's activists& spending 1/2 its time letting them pontificate their consistently glib opinions works so well. It helps that the film keeps cutting 2 a parallel storyline involving the "park", where the outcome is never quite clear. More impressive is how there's never a false moment in this faux doc despite the perhaps far-fetched (Gitmo?) set-up. The "actors" all seem 2 be real libs & cons brought 2gether in2 a room & told 2 argue their specific beliefs

Sides with the Left, but I don't think it's that far-fetched. People do talk like this, even now. It's a lot of info to put into an hour and a half, meaning you can't go into the kind of detail that would justify either side, really. Pretty gritty movie with good acting, I believe it can encourage conversation, though it won't break any stereotypes so in that sense it could set it back a bit. Still, it's a starting point. You put people in stressful situations and they act accordingly.

How much you'll enjoy this depends on how willing you are to spend 90 minutes with a film that is unabashedly didactic and heavy handed. It's very well made and edited, creating a palpable sense of tension and contrasting frustrating trial scenes with the wild despair of Punishment Park. The message is the key though, and that's where it falters, too realistic to observe with distance, too farfetched to view as grim reality, and the very flawed characters are too easy to dismiss.

Boyle bodoslama dalan politik filmlere su gunun politically correct, saatlerce konusulup hic bir sey soylenmeyen siyasi ortaminda cok ihtiyacimiz var. Amerika hala benzer yerde sayiyor, Turkiye'de zaten benzer vaziyette, vesaire vesaire. Sadece baski daha iyi saklaniyor ki muhafelefet yok olsun.

What this film really wants to say is that the government is satanically evil, cops are violent pigs, and the middle class are all callous, mindless drones. Instead it ends up displaying the infantile, self-righteous victim-mentality of the radical left that spawned it. This is a rabble-rousing dissident-propaganda film revealing the American hippie movement at its very stupidest.

The acting and dialogue is terrible. The players are all non-actors, largely improvising their material, and it shows. One could argue that this film doesn't take sides, but that's only because there's no good side to take. The right are cartoonish overblown portrayals. The left are childish, arrogant obnoxious brats spewing meaningless pseudo-revolutionary pablum. A simplistic, paranoid, and didactic viewpoint. This doesn't inspire debate, it simply reinforces stereotypes.

Okay, I'll admit it--I totally fell for it. I thought it was a real documentary. And I was getting outraged, and wondering why didn't we ever hear about this...until I plugged in to Watkins' intro after I'd already watched the film. What an amazingly great cast--I mean, everybody in it (and there must be 50 of 'em). But I think his intrusion into the final part is a liability. The fact though that I was actually prepared to believe it is maybe the scariest reflection on a very scary time.

An hour and a half of heavy breathing.

A dystopian alternative present day USA, where dissidents are treated with disgust and violence by the self proclaimed moral elite. Watkins gets his point across perfectly as he sides with his british camera crew who have the enpleasant job of filming the events that occur in Punishment Park, an alternative given to the "prisoners" who are sentenced to jail in mock trials.