Police Presence

 

RIOTSVILLE, U.S.A. (B+) - Sierra Pettengill follows up 2017's so-so "The Reagan Show" with this reverie about the government's response to the riots of the 1960s. The clips from 50+ years ago have a hypnotic effect, as this deep dive into the turbulence of the past shares ominous rhyme schemes with the present. Pettengill blows the dust off of one of the model towns built by the military to train law enforcement officers in counter-protest maneuvers, in the safety of a simulated city.

The mood is Big Brother kitschy. That ambience is driven by dispassionate, untethered narration (by Charlene Modeste), reciting philosophical musings akin to beat poetry, from a script written by Tobi Haslett. (It shares a vibe with Miranda July's dispassionate turn in "Fire of Love.")

Some of the clips are obscure and arch. We get NBC news team Huntley and Brinkley at their sardonic best, barely able to tamp down their contempt for the powers that be. Their telecast is sponsored by Gulf Oil, and its ad for bug spray sits there as one giant metaphor.

Pettengill dutifully pays respect to the urban riots of the day, and she spends a good amount of time digesting the Kerner Commission study on poverty. Then she takes a clever detour in the second half -- rather than rehash (yet again) the demonstrations at the 1968 Democratic in Chicago, she revisits the Republican convention that year in Miami, when police cracked down on protesters in a black neighborhood far from the site of the proceedings. 

It's a fascinating slice of history, and it cements this documentary as a powerful polemic about the brutality of the state, a mindset we just can't shake.

HOLD YOUR FIRE (B-minus) - What could have been a sharp hourlong PBS special gets stretched out to feature length to tell the story of a 1973 hostage situation in Brooklyn that served as the foundation for the practice of nuanced hostage negotiations that have since become the norm.

Writer-director Stefan Forbes, previously a cinematographer, is blessed with entertaining survivors of the crisis, which took place of 48 hours at John & Al's sports shop under the el tracks. Shu'aib Rahim was one of the gunmen, and Jerry Riccio was the spitfire proprietor of the store, which happened to be stocked with guns and ammunition. One police officer was killed at the beginning of the standoff, and one of the four offenders survived his bullet wounds.

Forbes unwinds the tale with a noir style (mostly through still photographs and archival news footage), but his pacing is slow, and the narrative starts to feel strung out and repetitive. Halfway through we get the back story of the four men, who had run afoul of the Nation of Islam, in particularly Rahim, who was trying to steal weapons to protect his family. He and Riccio are well-spoken and form a solid yin-yang dynamic as they spin the tale. Two hardened ex-cops are on hand to lob volleys across the thin blue line. And the quiet star is Harvey Schlossberg, the psychologist ex-cop who led the police response and pioneered the style of dispute resolution. 

Like too many documentaries, "Hold Your Fire," after spinning its wheels a bit, rushes the ending and wraps things up too neatly. It's just not quite compelling enough to fill the 93 minutes.

BONUS TRACK

The middle of "Riotsville" features an entire performance of "Burn, Baby, Burn" on public television by Jimmy Collier and Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick. Here is an alternative version: