There are movies that are devastating, yet you want to watch them again and again over the years, they leave a lasting memory behind, and even with a soul crushing subject they manage to be magnificent.
Now this one was not that sort of movie. It's hard to even look at it as a movie. It feels like a hastily thrown together rough outline that someone jotted down to at some point make a movie out of it, but never gotten there. The camera is often pushed right into the subject's face, so much so that it feels like parts of the frame are missing. It's overlong, overly drawn out, overly slow without much of a story. Everybody is either seriously mentally ill (including those that supposed to help), or a habitual drug abuser, or a gang member. Everything is dark and wet and dilapidated and repulsive. Not a glimmer of hope or light, as if the whole of NY has not ONE "regular" injury or ailment an ambulance crew would occasionally encounter, only the drug overdoses, drive by shootings etc., not to mention not one decent person around in general. It's laying the misery on so thick it's just obscene. And by overdoing it so much it manages to not elicit any empathy or sadness, it just remains incredibly boring and pointless.
I suffered through it, waiting for something to happen, some sort of story to emerge, some sort of connection with the film to form, but it never happened. To my mind this was not "gritty", just a long misery porn.
Now this one was not that sort of movie. It's hard to even look at it as a movie. It feels like a hastily thrown together rough outline that someone jotted down to at some point make a movie out of it, but never gotten there. The camera is often pushed right into the subject's face, so much so that it feels like parts of the frame are missing. It's overlong, overly drawn out, overly slow without much of a story. Everybody is either seriously mentally ill (including those that supposed to help), or a habitual drug abuser, or a gang member. Everything is dark and wet and dilapidated and repulsive. Not a glimmer of hope or light, as if the whole of NY has not ONE "regular" injury or ailment an ambulance crew would occasionally encounter, only the drug overdoses, drive by shootings etc., not to mention not one decent person around in general. It's laying the misery on so thick it's just obscene. And by overdoing it so much it manages to not elicit any empathy or sadness, it just remains incredibly boring and pointless.
I suffered through it, waiting for something to happen, some sort of story to emerge, some sort of connection with the film to form, but it never happened. To my mind this was not "gritty", just a long misery porn.