Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982-1992

This was a superb documentary! The doc not only shows the LA riots but the events from the past decades leading up to it. It does a great job of presenting the various perspectives surrounding the era. I really recommend it!

This documentary is fairly enthralling, and contains a lot of extremely useful information. It makes a good point of pointing out the shady decision making and terrible events that led up to the L.A Riots, and it really puts those events front and center. However, there are very odd editing choices made throughout the documentary that have the capability to throw the viewer out of the experience.

There are drops in audio, moments of complete silence, weird fades to black, interviews without names of who we are seeing talk to us, awkward breaks in the flow of conversation and in the flow of the entire documentary. The events and terrible choices and racially motivated hatred that led to these riots are important to know, and they are probably more important now then ever because we are still living with this systematic racism in our police across the US. However, the editing for this documentary leaves a lot to be desired.

For the most part, this is really good documentary filmmaking, with a slightly too long runtime and occasionally flawed editing holding it back (unless the abrupt cuts to black were intended to be there for commercial breaks, if this was a TV movie? Even then, it still could have felt smoother).

Funnily enough, the lead up to the protests/riots ends up being far more compelling, despite those events being comparatively less explosive. That may be a consequence of watching this after LA 1992, which I think is a slightly better film, and did a better job at showing - on a visceral level - the events in LA over those days in 1992.

Both are very much worth watching, though, and if you treated them as an exhausting double feature, you'd get a great recap of the history followed by a more cinematic (for lack of a better word) depiction of the aftermath of the Rodney King trial.

The LAPD come across like scum in this and that is an accurate portrayal. This documentary takes a unique and in-depth look at the years and events leading up to the city-wide violence that began April 29, 1992, when the verdict was announced in the Rodney King case. However that verdict was just the last straw for the African American Community of Los Angeles.

This film wisely shows us events that help ignite the riots of 1992. For years Daryl Gates was the chief of police & had a KKK mentality. This filtered down all through the LAPD.

In this documentary we learn for years the community was speaking about how they were treated. Not only were they treated bad by the police but also but court system and merchant owners.

The police involved with the beating of Rodney King really showed no remorse in what they did. In fact they acted proud of it. Even though later 3 of the four of the police officers no longer worked for the LAPD they were still working as police officers in other areas. (That is however not covered in this film).

During the riots we learn about the 4 people that were heroes that saved a mans life. That is something that the media really never covered.

I lived in the LA area when this happened and knew about most of the cases they were featured in this. What I didn't know was that the LAPD did kill several black men with a choke hold. Today nationwide cops now just shot you.

WE also learn that the 4 police officers lied in their reports about the Rodney King arrest and yet the racist Simi Valley Jurors did not convict them of that.

Now 25 years later there has been more murders of black men by police officers and most of them never get convicted. So don't be surprised when we have another uprising.

No Justice! No Peace! The Klan is alive & well and its in your local police department

The title is absolutely misleading. It is not a documentary about the racial tensions in LA between the 80s and the 90s. It is built up to justify the looting and the killings during the 92 Riots as a consequence of white men brutality. The racism of part of the black comunity towards the koreans is totally overlooked. The guys attacking and almost killing Reginald Denny appear as victims of social injustuice. The honest people (black, white, asian), who were the real victims of criminals hiding their actions behind the racial excuse, are almost forgotten. Adressed only to the guilt ridden conscience white upper class intellectuals.