The Killing of America

This is a bit of a guilty pleasure that should have some points knocked off because of the awful voiceover that gets more than a few facts wrong, features context-less statistics, and overall makes this a horribly simplified essay on violence. But it sure does collate a bunch of terrifyingly tense moments of actual death and endangerment along with fascinating and candid interview footage with the culprits . Who needs fiction?

So much to take in over a simplifying sleazy narrator and then I'm side tracked by that one Hillside Strangler that looks like Ross Geller when they do flashback episodes.

Most interesting.

This emphatic dissertation on violence in 20th century America, which tellingly remained unreleased here for 30 years, focuses on its decline. As uncompromising as it gets, not only showing interviews with killers but inundating us with candid footage of murders and momentous broadcast journalism of violent tragedies. The film is exponentially scarier more and more as time goes on. Made in '82, violence, unrest and psychopathic behavior in this country have done nothing but get massively worse.

A scary portrait of a sick society. That my childhood and youth were spent in this h--lscape explains so much of the emotional difficulties of my 20s.

While it is a bit difficult to take this on board as a 'legitimate' documentary, it is extremely effective in what it sets out to do. With a range of excellent archival footage, and well assembled, it can hardly fail to fascinate. Nevertheless, it's hard to view this as much more than a particularly blunt and (laudably) fearless Michael Moore style documentary. It's certainly a great time capsule at the very least.

The unofficial sequel to Taxi Driver.

A unique documentary - features real violence from the JFK assassination to Vietnam to police shootouts. Not for the faint of heart. Keeps a purely factual tone, never feels exploitative - it tracks the rise in violent crime in the United States from JFK to the 1980s, but never really offers an explanation. It simply puts it to the viewer as "violent crime has increased, as has our exposure to it". This lack of central argument would be a detriment if not for the powerful and upsetting imagery.

I was expecting some kind of big, societal demographic numbers, stats & criminological explanations. But instead, it was full of stories of individual serial killers, assassins, political or not. Also, it includes some gore visuals