The Central Park Five
***
This documentary takes the wrongful conviction and imprisonment of five black and Hispanic teenage boys for the rape of a white, female jogger -- and makes its a straightforward case. It is thoughtful, educational and understated -- tonally, the trademark work of veteran documentarian Ken Burns, who directs, writes and produces with daughter Sarah Burns, who wrote a book about the crime, and her husband, David McMahon. It depicts the hysteria of a racially and socioeconomically divided New York City in April 1989. The late-night attack on jogger Trisha Meili -- a 28-year-old Wall Street investment banker -- became a symbol of everything that seemed wrong with society. The five young men from Harlem -- Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Korey Wise (previously spelled Kharey Wise), and Yusef Salaam -- became easy scapegoats. The Central Park Five aims to clear their names publicly, in a way that did not when a judge vacated the convictions in 2002. Not rated but contains language and graphic, violent details.
Killing Them Softly
**
Writer-director Andrew Dominik has taken the 1974 crime novel Cogan's Trade by George V. Higgins and set it in the days before the 2008 presidential election. As if we couldn't decipher for ourselves that organized crime functions as its own form of capitalism, Killing Them Softly turns on the mini-implosion that occurs when a couple of idiots rob a mob-protected card game.
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