The Interrupters (Parando las balas)

"The Interrupters" is sad, upsetting, and hopeful. It's a year in Chicago with two different groups: CeaseFire Interrupters and Violence Interrupters. Both groups are dedicated to quelling, if not eliminating, the violence in the streets of Chicago. We were taken through Englewood, the "Ville," the "Gardens," and perhaps other neighborhoods in Chicago. The Interrupters were dedicated individuals from those streets who were committed to saving lives. They were once in the streets themselves, and who better to warn from the perils of street life than someone who survived it?

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Flowers and candles, hand-printed messages written on notebook paper tacked to makeshift shrines, all decorated with photographs of young victims. This touching memorials litter the blood-spattered streets of Chicago and are the remains of the day in The Interrupters, a powerful and disturbing documentary by the talented Steve James ( Hoop Dreams ).

His film takes the moviegoer directly into the crime-ridden neighborhoods as we meet a group of peacemakers trying to restore sanity and preaching their anti-violence message to the choir. The group is called CeaseFire and it is made up of ex-gang leaders and former convicts whose motto is Stop the Violence - Save a Life.

James directed and photographed his documentary and focuses on three interrupter and their "scared straight" strategies of tough love and reality checks. We met Cobe Williams, a former gang member and family man now whose father was killed during a street fight, Eddie Bocanegra, a young man easily impressed by the gang's image of fast cars, money, and girls who served 14 years for murder and now uses art as a method of expression and conflict mediation, and the primary spokesperson, Ameena Matthews, the daughter of a gang leader who was physically, emotionally, and sexually abused at an early age and has since let faith and family lead her away from that life-style and keep her grounded.

We also met some of those troubled teens: Caprysha, a defeated Precious type, living in a halfway house, dreaming of a better life while constantly lying and breaking her parole; Lil Mikey, released from prison and wanting to be a better role model for his siblings; and Flamo, a young man enraged with his mother and brother's arrest and wanting his own form of justice. It is impossible not to care about their people and their lives.

The film consists of interviews with gang members, families of their victims, and scenes of escalating violence. At times, The Interrupters becomes slightly repetitive in its interventions and lock-step mindset of anger and frustration. More judicious editing could have made the film even more forceful. But the passion for its compelling subject and James' craft as a filmmaker make up for those minor complaints.

The documentary gives us no easy answers as drugs, unemployment, alcohol, poverty,and guns still are a major reason for the neighborhood's ills. Politicians come and go with each election, giving lip service and promises. Yet these people and their difficult lives become the on-going problem in search of a solution, and groups like CeaseFire seem to be their only course of positive action. The Interrupters allows us to see a world that we can never fathom and acknowledge the spirit of a group of strong-willed survivors, trying to make a difference and save a life or two throughout a normal day. GRADE: B

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Only 9 reviews?!! This movie needs to be seen!

I live in Chicago, and every morning the Chicago Tribune has a headline tallying the overnight wounded and dead. It's not at all unlike the beginning days of the Gulf War, where every news hour would begin with the number of soldiers killed that day. The difference being that those stories gradually subsided as the numbers dwindled, and they were based on deaths in an actual military conflict. There are neighborhoods in Chicago that are as much like war zones as any area of Afghanistan, but no one is paying attention.

"The Interrupters" doesn't really try to address why no one is paying attention. It doesn't need to, because everyone pretty much knows the answer even if they're not willing to admit it to themselves. These aren't rural white kids getting killed for their country; these are poor, disenfranchised black kids who most people don't care about. Instead, this documentary follows a few members of CeaseFire, a nonprofit group comprised of past gang members, street criminals, etc. who are now using a tactic of intervention to stop chains of violence before they spiral out of control. These people are deeply admirable. They're not trying to break up gangs, they're not police informers. They're simply trying to make one person understand how pointless it is to shoot another person, no matter what grievances are at play.

This film is by Steve James, the same director who did the tremendous "Hoop Dreams," and if it doesn't have that film's epic scope, it has a more immediate sense of urgency.

After watching "The Interrupters" my wife and I were instantly online looking into ways to support CeaseFire. I hope others do the same.

Grade: A+

Steve James' documentary The Interrupters opens with audio taken from several different Chicago news sources, reporting "x" number of people murdered in the city, and how an outbreak of gun violence has ripped apart the area as a whole. We then cut to a volunteer organization that takes the courageous act of stepping in at the sight of conflict amongst gang-members, and works to try and prevent yet another death in a city so consumed by heinous crimes. This group is called "the Interrupters," and for the next two hours we witness their invaluable actions.

The Interrupters work for an organization called "CeaseFire," and its members are comprised of former gang-members; a positive, being that since they are still young, they can speak the language of the gangs and recall the motives of an underprivileged teenager. While they work entirely for the area of Chicago, much of their time is devoted to bettering Englewood, one of the most broken cities in the entire nation. 98% of Englewood residents are black, with the main age demographic being people under the thirty. With a 25.8% unemployment rate (which has now risen to 44%, roughly two years after the release of this film), the townspeople look towards a life of gangs as a way to earn respect, money, territory, and get a quick-fix for violence and danger. This makes the area especially dangerous, not just for the gang-members of opposing territories, but the residents who want no part in the crime world. Whether you're a gang-member on the front lines of violence, a passive resident, a bystander, or even a young child you're a potential victim to a senseless problem.

One of the leading violence interrupters is a bright, young woman named Ameena Mathews. Once an active gang-member, she has since married, converted to being a Muslim, and works to travel around the community promoting a truce and a compromise between opposing forces. When she bravely lectures in the middle of thirty or so gang-members about how there's no reason at all to be dealing or discussing potential crimes when children are arriving home from school, the petite woman herself is open to almost anything. Steve James and his camera crew are as well. Yet Mathews boldly preaches her gospel before traveling on to continue doing more work.

Frequently, CeaseFire will hold fiery roundtable meetings, where group members will discuss what fight/argument they've broken up since the last meeting and what leads do they have on any further gang activity. During these meetings, despite several dozens of Interrupters being on the job and prepared for just about anything, it's when we see how grossly outnumbered they are. Keep in mind, Chicago isn't just Englewood, and with a population of over 3,000,000 citizens, the per-capita rate of the CeaseFire members is and will always remain outnumbered. This doesn't make their efforts any less commendable, but with over 500 homicides taken place in a city so torn in 2012, there needs to be more recruiting and soon. How much longer can a city be referred to as names like "Chiraq," and boast a statistic that states it is more violent than Iraq and Afghanistan? Aesthetically, The Interrupters is extraordinary, with several long-shots of the crisp, yet crumbling Chicagoland area. Scarcely has a documentary about going into a real issue been so engrossing visually. Yet what truly makes The Interrupters the captivating, multi-layered documentary that it is is the way it conducts its subjects. Too often do I see documentaries take the path of a scare-tactic gift-wrapped as a formal piece of information. Here, we are presented with nothing but the true homelives of these troubled teenagers and adults, who are not only bearing hard circumstances on their shoulders, but misguided direction, societal neglect, negative perceptions, and shallow stereotypes. Think about the way white people are often associated with being wealthy, pure, and successful, while black people often associated with being deviant, rude, and obnoxious. Are these stereotypes shaping us or are we shaping our stereotypes? This is a bolder question from a documentary, asked naturally, that for once doesn't come from a glaring, empty statistic.

One of the smaller, yet more relevant details the film goes into is the significance of rival-gangs and how integrating them in hopes of a "melting pot"-like effect is purely hopeless on all accounts. This is shown when Carver High School, a populated urban school, was rebranded as a military academy, it forced many kids to move to a nearby neighborhood and attend Fenger High School. Carver and Fenger have a notorious gang rivalry occurring, and not long after the schools were integrated, a teenager named Derrion Albert was brutally beaten to death and the beating was captured on a cell phone to be viewed on Youtube.

James, who made Hoop Dreams, which is often hailed as one of the best pieces of documentary filmmaking ever, lived a full year in Chicago, and witnessed unforeseeable acts of not just despair and ugliness, but also true bravery. Being in the line of gunfire and danger numerous times, and filming highly-graphic footage with true documentarian impunity shows not only devotion but true commitment to a job. The Interrupters was also co-produced by sociologist Alex Kotlowitz, who wrote the popular novel "There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America," a profoundly eye-opening book on the lives of inner-city children who live in public housing projects.

This is a powerhouse documentary in every sense of the word, emotional, exhilarating, heart-wrenching, and often, very melancholic. It shows that while there's a silver lining of hope reaching the Chicagoland area in terms of a method to eliminate seemingly endless gun violence, it may be too facile to call it a formal "solution" just yet.

NOTE: This review was read before my English class, Junior year in high school, in March 2013.

The problem with gang violence in Chicago hasn't changed much (for better or worse) in decades. In that light, "The Interrupters" can't be considered timely, and it certainly doesn't expose a new and growing problem. But in focusing on a group of dedicated violence interrupters, writer Alex Kotlowitz and documentary filmmaker Steve James ("Hoop Dreams"), stepping away from his usual sports focus, capture the cycle of violence in such a complete way that you can finally start to see how it could in fact end.

CeaseFire is a violence prevention group that largely consists of former convicts and people who have spent time in prison. They dedicate a large portion of their time to being present in the communities where violence strikes and stopping conflicts before they escalate into violence. They also make themselves available as resources and confidants to individuals in need of a calming influence.

Essentially, these interrupters do what the police can't, even though none of the subjects come out and say it directly, nor does James imply it in a heavy-handed fashion. The people in these neighborhoods don't trust the police and fear the police, whereas these interrupters are adult role models who they can relate to/who can relate to them, people they respect.

James chronicles a year from summer through spring, or the most violent time of year to a time of year when hope grows anew. He focuses on the efforts of three violence interrupters and a few of the young people they each reach out to during the course of this year.

The first is Ameena Matthews, daughter of notorious Chicago gang leader Jeff Fort, who at one point became involved in a drug ring. She's easily the most magnetic figure in the film and given that families of violence victims seek her comfort specifically, it says a lot about her strength as a community leader. Throughout the film she delivers powerful and moving speeches suggestive of her strength, but as she works with a loving but emotionally troubled teenager named Caprysha, we learn even she has moments of doubt.

Next is Cobe Williams, more soft spoken, but whose prison time give him a street cred that finds him able to talk to and work with some hostile individuals. His work with a gangbanger named Flamo, who he comes into contact with at a serious boiling point, is one of the more powerful arcs in the film.

Lastly there's Eddie Bocanegra, who does art work with students but spent half his life in prison for murder. His redemption story proves more than any that there's hope for those who make these fatal mistakes.

"The Interrupters" explores the deepest depths and root causes of violence, enough to even the most self-assured pacifist consider reality that is the cycle of violence and that it's not simply a matter of just not letting it be an option. Many of the subjects discuss the role of parents being there or not there and how they are role models whether they want to be or not, as well as how violence has become part of the culture because of the value placed on pride and ego.

Like any great documentary, "The Interrupters" is a conversation starter. Yes, it's edited in a powerful way will elicit emotion, but there are so many discussions worth having based on what the subjects say and do and what we observe. It's really hard to capture the entire spectrum of the conversation on a subject as general as violence, but somehow James manages to do it. And nothing he presents is black and white (not referring to race); if you pay attention through the entire film, you rationally cannot make generalizations about the roots of violence.

There are moments when the film drags a bit as it takes a step back to cover the human interest element of the film, the tragedy of it all. That's important, but its call to action is loud and impossible to ignore, so much so that you want it to continue its search for an answer, or in this case, to see if the work CeaseFire does really makes a difference.

It certainly does. "The Interrupters" proves as much. At the same time, we become so aware of how they can only be in once place at a time. A handful of occasions during the film we hear someone talk about some act of violence unfolding somewhere else right now as the camera is rolling. It's a wake-up call that unless the City of Chicago or the government take an extensive, grass-roots approach to ending violence, there's no way that even these amazing individuals can end it.

~Steven C

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