The Central Park Five (2012) Reviews

• This Is Why You Make Movies

  esparker20002012-11-26

  You must try your very best to see The Central Park Five. I left it 5 hours ago and I'm still on fire. I have no right words. It might be the best documentary I've ever seen. Or let me put it like this: I've never watched a film that better justified making films in the first place. I just felt like I witnessed 119 minutes of truth-telling that was handled exquisitely from a narrative and visual storytelling perspective. I almost didn't go. I was tired and I was thinking, you know, I have 3 hours here (my husband was watching our young son) do I really want to spend it focused on tragedy? I am so deeply happy I went. Maysles Cinema screened it at the Dempsey auditorium in Harlem. It was packed to the rafters. Throughout the screening, you never heard a rustle. You never heard a cough. You never saw the light of someone texting. Total, utter rapt attention. And then, we had the Q&A with four of the men. Four full human beings who had so much taken away from them. They filled the stage with their powerful, radiant presence. Sara Burns and David McMahon were there, too, as was Albert Maysles himself. An incredible experience.

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• I never thought there would be a documentary filmmaker as good a Ken Burns, but I was wrong.

  highelegance2012-12-03

  Sarah Burns (Ken Burns' daughter) and her husband, David McMahon along with Ken Burns have managed to create a documentary SO fantastic, SO incredibly moving, SO impassioned, and SO painful to those of us who want to believe in the goodness of man, that I implore you to see it! And once you have, I hope you will learn more about the continued stonewalling by the New York City Justice System to give these 5 fine gentlemen (and I don't use the word "gentlemen" lightly) the justice and apology they so deserve... and follow up with a letter writing campaign. Here's the information you will need: http://wbls.com/A-Call-for-Justice-Central-Park-Jogger-5/14823124 (I have no connection with this website, I'm just someone who was lucky enough to see this documentary at a local theater and wants to do SOMETHING to help!) And to the 5 men: Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana and Kharey Wise... you are what we should all aspire to... loving, honest, and with a strength of character and strong moral compass that was (and sadly still is) so sadly missing in all those who did you wrong.

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• Human honesty, Simplistic Analysis

  mduggan-706-9940422013-04-07

  Korey,Ray Santana (and Ray's father) and the other Five are the stars of this documentary really. Their humanity and suffering is etched in their faces. The story of five innocent boys (14-16) railroaded into confessing to a crime they didn't commit by police and prosecutors that just wanted feathers in their cap must touch the heart of any parent of a teenage boy. That they are ever exonerated comes as a miracle--and has nothing to do with the justice system. Ray's father says it is literally the hand of God, and honestly, this is one of those things that makes you wonder! The best thing about the movie is the men themselves. The trouble is that for Mr. Burns it is all about the racial fault line between black and white. Does he think we don't have any dividing lines up here in NH? Has he noticed the trailer parks hidden behind pine trees? All white people, definitely divided. I lived in NYC in 1990, and there was another headline blaring then about a white mob killing an innocent black man. The prosecutors in that case were also falling all over themselves making political hay. A person reading the headlines in both cases (Bensonhurst and Central Park 5) would have their blood boiling within 3 seconds. Meanwhile, more and more people in NYC spoke Spanish, Hindi, Chinese. We actually all took the subways together and were often courteous to one another, trapped like sardines, while holding our tabloids which screamed headlines that suggested, "stick to your own kind." It was less and less about black and white, but the tabloids never got that, and Mr. Burns doesn't either. He's sort of a reverse tabloid. But Korey and Ray and Antron and Kevin and Yussef are extraordinary people, and I thank Mr. Burns and his daughter Sara for permitting us to know their story. And this is more complicated than anything Mr. Burns has made before, so everyone should see it.

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• One of the best docs in years

  jdesando2013-01-11

  In the great Ken Burns tradition, The Central Park Five is a documentary full of detail and a story seamless in drama and heart. With little voice-over narration and smoothly edited testimonies from talking heads, Burns powerfully tells of the five African-American and Latino young men convicted of raping and beating a white female jogger in Central Park on April 20, 1989. Just like endings last year of another compelling documentary, The Imposter, and the docudramas Argo and Zero Dark Thirty, we know the outcome (their convictions will be vacated by a convict's confession in 2002). Yet, the dramatic tension is constant as we witness prosecutors and police push for convictions in a racially-charged and violent New York desperately needing closure of an infamous crime that exacerbated that tension. The coercion of underage suspects and rush to judgment stand just behind the actual crime for horrible injustice. Director Burns gets it right by letting the principals, from the accused to attorneys, tell the story. The ending commentary is the only way to exit, with a lament for the years of young lives stolen and the difficulty of the adults becoming part of the mainstream. Reality is The Central Park Five's reason for being and one of the best documentaries in recent years.

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• A powerful if quiet indictment of a society's failings

  runamokprods2014-05-27

  Any story of justice denied, of people wrongfully imprisoned is inherently dramatic. But Ken Burns uses this case of five frightened teen aged boys prodded and manipulated into confessing to a crime they didn't commit to dig into some larger societal issues as well. Yes, the police and prosecutors look bad for the way they mislead the kids into confessions, and then steadfastly refuse to look at other evidence. But the press also comes off badly for exploiting the case to sell papers and satisfy a frightened city's desire for law and order, instead of asking questions when it became clear things simply weren't adding up. And politicians for expressing condemnation and outrage at these young men before they were even (wrongly) convicted. A strong and pointed warning about those times when society's desire for revenge overcomes it's sense of logic, humanity and fairness.

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