User reviews

This is an excellent series I heard about on the Sundance channel & rented this 5 part mini-series as I could get my hands on it. This shows all of the hope, despair, loss, bangers, gov't issues, & the plain absurdity of parts of the running of a city. This shows the difference in the issues in a city of people who seem to have all of the problems you can imagine. Cory Booker the Mayor of Newark is a quite intelligent articulate Man who will be a force in larger politics in the future. He seems to really have the drive of personality and intelligence & know how to get things done. This follows both him, the Director of the Police, a woman named Jayda & her husband who wrote a book called "Bloods." I don't want to sound too cliché' but the political infighting & tough streets are too real to bear sometimes. I recommend everyone to see this absolutely fantastic series. My only complaint is that I wish it was a couple episodes longer. What this most reminds me of is the Brilliant show "The Wire" except everything about this is real. So if you like "The Wire" you are bound to like this. Thank you Forest Whitaker for getting this done. Drew

5 part documentary mini-series about the politics of Newark, NJ over the course of 2008, culminating in the night of Obama's election.

The 'star' is Newark's absurdly charismatic mayor Corey Booker, whom the series paints as a man truly on a mission to help his city, without turning him into a one-note saint.

Yet, by following several story lines – a young, poor woman trying to get her life together as she's moves away from drugs and gangs and tries to become a force for good despite awful obstacles, the Director of the police department who seems very effective, but is fought and resented within the department for coming from New York, and taking power from the existing Chief of Police, and several other well chosen characters, we really get a mosaic of a modern city and it's terrible problems.

It has been called a real-life version of 'The Wire' ad nauseum, but that is good description.

There are arguable flaws. It can feel a bit one sided, or at least myopic at times. Since we only follow one character in a given situation, it's hard to know what the other side's point of view is. (For example, we so rarely see the Police Director's rival - the Chief- we barely know what he looks like, much less whether he has any validity in his complaints.

But I was willing to accept that as part of the nature of the film. It's not meant to be 'fair and balanced', it's a study of a handful of individuals and their experiences, a group of character studies of people trying to change their city, not objective reporting.