Crips and Bloods: Made in America | DVD Review

As documentaries go, Crips and Bloods: Made in America is very good. More than a fascinating look at the gang wars in South Los Angeles that have claimed more than 15,000 lives in the last thirty years, it delves into the many contributing factors that caused such civil unrest to erupt among the young African-Americans of this community and also examines how current grass roots projects might help solve the problems and eventually end the violence.

Narrated by Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker (The Last King of Scotland) and featuring interviews with many gang members past and present, Crips and Bloods is director Stacy Peralta’s latest look at a marginalized portion of society. While his previous subjects (skateboarders in Dogtown and Z-Boys, surfers in Riding Giants) were not so tragic, here he tackles a subject that could easily be described as a powderkeg waiting for a spark; many critics have already griped that this film should not have been made by a white man, that he couldn’t possibly understand what is going on in these neighborhoods. But Peralta’s deft editing tricks and his use of some extraordinary and extensive archival footage of the Watts riots of 1965 and the Rodney King riots of 1992 (among other things) just go to show that he’s willing to go to great lengths in order to understand his subject and to help make audiences understand where he’s coming from.

Premiering at Sundance in January of 2008 and then playing the festival circuit for a year before being broadcast on PBS and being released on DVD, most critics gave the doc rave reviews, saying how important and all-encompassing a movie it is. In reality, though, Bloods and Crips is not quite perfect; at 99 minutes, it’s too short by at least a half hour and could have gone more deeply into the role of women in how these boys have turned out. It’s an escalating cycle…what would you expect a young boy to do if his father has gone to prison and his mother does nothing but verbally degrade the man non-stop in front of her son? Yes, Peralta does allow that self-hatred has something to do with the kids turning to gangs for some sense of belonging, but he does not even try to explain the mothers’ roles in promoting that self-hatred, instead going for the emotional moment by showing the mothers of dead gangbangers crying while their sons’ name and age when they died are displayed on the screen. A nice touch, perhaps, but a bit contrived.

The 5.1 Surrond sound is put to excellent use here, as long as you are in the mood to hear the sounds of semi-automatic gunfire coming from behind your head. Special features included on the DVD release are:
The Making of Crips and Bloods: Made in America: This 30-minute featurette includes some interesting information about why the many people involved thought it was important to realize this project. Included are interviews with producer and NBA all-star Baron Davis, himself a native of South Los Angeles, and football hall-of-famer-turned-social-activist Jim Brown. One interesting statement by Peralta was that in making this film he wanted to answer the question “if affluent, middle-class white American teenagers were forming gangs, arming themselves with automatic weapons and killing one another, how would our country respond? Would our government step in to investigate the crisis, counsel the victims, heal the community, and direct funds towards a lasting solution? Or would our government allow this violence to continue unabated, decade after decade after decade?”
Deleted Scenes: All of these scenes could easily have remained in the film and I’m sure there were many more cut scenes as well. But as with all documentaries, in the interest of a reasonable running time, something had to go, right?
Interviews with Lil Wayne and Snoop Dogg: Snoop discusses why he wanted to be involved with the project and why it’s important that everyone see this film, but at seven minutes, it’s a nice message surrounded by a lot of repetitive rambling. Lil Wayne provides perhaps one of the most telling quotes concerning why rap stars like Ice Cube and Tupac Shakur who escaped the “hood” and became stars don’t do more to help their former communities out: once you’ve escaped, you don’t really want to go back, do you?

Despite the minor gripe mentioned earlier, Crips and Bloods: Made in America is ultimately an engrossing and important film that offers a glimmer of hope at the end, and it includes plenty of facts that will help the uninitiated (bad pun intended) to at least begin to understand the problem that is gang culture in South Los Angeles.

Movie rating – 4

Disc Rating – 4