Riotsville, U.S.A.

It was disappointing to watch what should have been a worthwhile project. In terms of the footage presented, we see way more outtakes than the actual controversial enactments of the staged "riots" for the benefit of an audience of Generals and Politicians.

The one thing that seemed to be a revelation was that the idea of Snipers was actually one which was fabricated by the police in order to show that they should bring in heavy artillery, but the reality is that the snipers were just police plants shooting wildly, even at each other to invoke a response -- there was only one case of an unknown sniper who attempted to shoot at the police while drunk, and so the sniper missed every target.

But the problem with the documentary is the frequent use of non-essential footage, "padding" the scenes with news commentators prattle, and often playing TV logos and even a commercial or promotional tape in order to add commentary on the alignment of the news media, only to miss the target much like the sniper -- the commercials, as much as they are nostalgic and naive, are wasted material in the otherwise over-long project. Cutting out 30 minutes of this wasted footage would have better served the filmmaker's goal.

Of course, then it would not be considered a contender for a Feature by the Academy, which one senses is the filmmaker's attitude in this presentation -- as evidenced by the use of overly dramatic voice-over consisting of poetic nonsense.

Since the filmmaker sees the found footage as so extraordinary, we are intrigued by the idea that we might then be able to see the actual riot footage of the real events, such as the Democratic National Convention in 1968, but none of this happens, and instead we are given a somewhat watered down version of the event at the Republican National Convention the same year when Richard Nixon was nominated -- and the protest by a small group of black ghetto denizens was a complete and utter failure.