Lockdown, USA
Home > Movies > Lockdown, USA > Reviews
|
Lockdown, USA Review: Lockdown U.S.A. is an at times illuminating and at times tedious expose on New York's harsh Rockefeller Drug Laws and Def Jam founder and Rush Communications CEO Russell Simmons's attempts to get them overturned. Simmons uses his celebrity and corporate power to draw media attention and outside support to the cause and though his motives seem entirely good-hearted this at times risks turning the documentary into a self-promotional hagiography. He seems eager to dispel such an effect by turning the action on the Bests, a family whose loving hard working father Daryl has been wrongly sentenced for fifteen years, and whose story becomes the prime case study for the draconian and unjust ramifications of the drug laws. After the initial euphoria of the organization's hip-hop star heavy-rally in front of City Hall in Manhattan (which features Mariah Carey and 50 Cent), the struggles of getting anything accomplished in New York's city and state governments becomes drearily apparent. The political system is comprised of entrenched machinery and eccentric egomaniacal politicians conducted in a circus-like atmosphere. To watch Simmons, who hustles like crazy, works with NAACP head Dr. Benjamin Chavis and Andrew Cuomo, and can get Mayor Michael Bloomberg on the phone on command, still get stuck in the morass is extremely depressing. Further complications arise when a secondary character in the proceedings, stand-up comedian Randy Credico, emerges as a cautionary example of the limits of good intentions when he nearly shoots the movement in the foot in his no-compromise determination to meet all provisions and back talking of his fellow activists. What results is a multi-sided take on activist politics, at times marred by confusing inter-partisan battles, limited footage, and an uncertain time frame, but nonetheless effective in getting its basic points across. Michael Buening, All Movie Guide |
Browse More Movies:
