77 Minutes

If you didn't know who Charlie Minn was before this documentary, trust me he'll make sure you won't forget. The guy inserts himself in almost every interview and it comes off as a desperate egocentric way of saying "Remember I'm the director! Don't forget who I am!" You'll hear testimony from victims & responders & then out of nowhere for no reason at all, Charlie Minn will insert himself into the film just to make sure you remember who he is.

If you aren't familiar with the tragedy that occurred in 1984 then you might find the 1st half engaging, to his credit, Charlie Minn does do fairly well showing the perspectives of victims & 1st responders and balancing it out with pictures & news report stock footage. Where the film falls flat is with Charlie Minn's journalistic approach, Charlie Minn doesn't come off as a level headed documentarian but a biased news reporter.

One of the biggest issues I have with this film is that it has an over reliance of stock footage from the crime scene and it's not just shown for a few seconds it's shown throughout the film and it's beyond disturbing to watch. You see the bodies of men, women & children & even a baby. It's clear Charlie Minn is trying to use shock value to get the audience more engaged into the tragedy but it's completely unnecessary, we know this is a horrible event and we don't need to be shown the corpses of the poor victims every 30 seconds.

Another issue I have is Charlie Minn's approach to directing, as a filmmaker myself I know that documentaries shouldn't be biased and try to keep everything neutral that way the audience comes to their own conclusions. Charlie Minn tells the audience how they should feel, he wants you to be mad at the police and blame them for so many lives lost.

It's clear from his questions & answers what his goal is. He's trying to point a finger to blame and he focuses a lot of his blame on the police for taking so long to take the shooter down. I understand he thinks the police should have acted much faster but it's clear from his answers to first responders at the time that he's very naive and ignorant to the protocol and orders of law enforcement. Mr Minn needs to keep in mind that this took place in 1984, a time when mass shootings were not very common, he also has to take into account how the shooting effected the community and how it is today, has there been any other mass shootings in this city? Is crime in this city an issue? Do citizens feel unsafe still? Are citizens content with the way police do their job today? These are questions left unanswered that I wish the documentary went more into depth with. One of the first responders says he had a chance to take out the shooter at one point but didn't because he didn't know the circumstances of the situation, he didn't know whether or not the shooter had an accomplice and the shot he would have taken would have gone through a glass door which means there was a high chance it would have ricocheted off and missed. Personally I think the officer's reasons are valid and completely understandable, but Mr Minn makes it clear he thinks he should have taken the shot when he says "A bullet's a bullet". That response alone tells you everything you need to know about Charlie Minn's naiveness.

In conclusion I would have to say this tragedy deserves better, the film is mostly just a recap of events. Aside from the victims & first responders perspectives, there's really not much else the film adds, it doesn't even have much follow up with the victims, it's just having them relive that horrible day & a couple of sentences of what they're doing today. Charlie Minn may have had good intentions but his "style" and ego get in the way of maintaining a balanced and neutral documentary. Whether you agree with his views or not, it still comes off as unprofessional and biased. That's not what documentary filmmaking is.

This could've been an excellent doco. It's an absolutely horrific tragedy and a piece of history that deserves to be told but it needs to be done with some class and sophistication. The director (who put himself in this more than he should have) who also interviews the victims and officers on the scene and is so incredibly ridiculous in his line of questioning.

There also should've been a content warning about the police crime scene video.

The appetite for this genre seems indiscriminate to wasting time with meandering, inarticulate personal accounts. I can't think of an excuse for run time 1.5 hrs except laziness or greed. This should be a tight 30 mins.

The McDonald's Massacre. Thirty-four years ago, it was the worst shooting in American history and forced the producers of "Red Dawn" to remove a shot of a tank rolling up to a McDonald's from the movie. That little piece of trivia is the reason I was aware of this tragedy in the first place, and it's for that reason that I was psyched for a documentary. Hopefully, a good one.

But "77 Minutes" does not measure up. The movie was produced with an axe to grind, and filmmaker Charlie Minn leaves no illusions about it. His beef is with the police who failed to take immediate action, and almost every officer interviewed is taken to task. You can understand a person in Minn's position who wants answers for those wronged, but this isn't a quest; he's already made up his mind and now the police have to explain why they screwed up. That's not journalism, and it becomes grating after a while.

What Minn does get right however is a refusal to celebrate the killer (I don't think the man's name is even uttered in the film), and instead letting the survivors speak. That's the reason to see this movie. I even appreciate the use of graphic crime scene footage to impress upon our current desensitized state the horrors witnessed that day. Yes, even the gratuitous dead infant shots. It all works to convey the victims' traumas.

I found myself on the side of the police in this movie. Not all of them became politicians, and you can tell that they're sincere in their appraisals of the operation carried out that day; they've clearly wrestled with this for years. And I liked hearing from them. But it's as if Minn lets off the killer as an anomalous crazy and instead demands to know why the police were the bad guys in taking so long to take him down.

And that is abhorrent.

4/10

I was 8 when this happened so I hadn't heard anything about it until now. It's absolutely heartbreaking. Unimaginable suffering in this community.

The questions Charlie Minn asked the police officers were ridiculous. I don't know if Charlie Minn was alive in 1984 when this tragedy occurred but knowledge of mass shootings was minimal. Every police department did not employ officers who had experience responding to them. It's not like it is today. People weren't carrying cell phones. Information was not received in minutes. Of course things could've been done differently, lessons were learned, protocol was changed. But to personally attack individual officers is so naïve and hurtful. No officer arrived on scene and thought "we'll just sit bank and let this play out". He makes it sound like they chose to let people die. These officers did what they knew to do at the time.