American Meth

As a documentary, this has to be one of the poorer ones I've seen recently. The problem of meth is fascinating, and the ubiquity of it means there couldn't be any end to the interesting individuals, interviews, or footage that could be found on the subject...but this docco seems to have found very little.

It's disorganized, inconsistent, poorly shot and poorly edited. The narration switches seemingly at random between Val Kilmer and printed screens (complete with typos). The background of the meth problem from treatment and law enforcement perspectives is jumbled and incomplete.

(An entire section of the movie is devoted to listening to a couple on meth argue while their children run around their trailer - but the lack of editing means the reason for being there is quickly lost and we're left wondering why we set foot in their trailer park in the first place.)

In the end there's no deeper understanding of the problem of meth, and you're left feeling like you've just watched a final project from Film 101.

If you've been living under a rock for the past 20 years, this may be shocking and informative for you. However, if you've had it smashed in your face for that long, why would you put yourself thru it? Up to you.

This documentary is pretty bad . It does not appear to have a point other than to get a cop, a counselor, politicians some junkies on tape. The more f-ed up the junkies and the more abusive they are to the poor children they have the better . did anyone on the crew ever think of calling child services , or getting these people into rehab or something ? hell no , they were white trash gold ! i do see the merit of an attempt to show how this stuff affect families , but allowing these people to continue living like animals than people of the 21st century , all this while letting their naked children eat garbage and play outside in winter without shirts or pants, tends to turn this already shaky and irrelevant piece of documentary filmmaking into a sort of shock film that is useless to anyone except those who have a hard on for tragedy . i'm in no way saying that a filmmaker should narc on his subjects , but i do see the perversity of pointing out what is basically child abuse , while sitting in that house and drinking your latte.

2 out of 10 because it could have been much better but not much worse

The problem with this documentary is it shows things from the POV of a cop on his beat rather than a sociological wide view of the issue. The conclusions it makes are due to this narrow scope. The fact is if law enforcement decriminalized this disease, all profit motive woukd be taken away from all the pushers in Mexico looking to expand their drug and crime related enterprises. You realky have to wonder where the line between law enforcement and criminality exists, if it does at all. If the law enforcement managers and top officers had the best interests of a community at heart, they would decriminalize this as well as the more profitable drug, cocaine. I understand why dumb beat cops will never see it this way, their perspective is to close to the problem at hand. However, when the ivy league educated managers of the law enforcement system continue the prohibition of illegal substances, with the knowledge of what prohibitions means for the black market businesses across the border, you have to wonder if at least these officers are making decisions to benefit their industry and employees over the interests of the innocent community members they police, if not out right collusion with black market business and their many employees both in Mexico and across the border. You really have to wonder who the police are for, themselves or the communities they happen to police. Increasingly, e police force is becoming more and more separate from the locality it serves, with specialized pros being bused in from other regions. It seems that the national police force is taking cues from China and other despotic countries, which find it easy to coerce police into oppressing citizens due to the targeted recruitment rural bumpkins to police urban areas like Beijing or city dweller to police rural areas. The way Tianemien Square worked was because the army used to quash the democratic urban dwellers was composed of uneducated rural farm boys who had no literacy let alone a college degree, As long as we the tax payers stay out of our community police forces' business, they will continue to increasing detach themselves and eventually become more similar to an hired security force rather than an integral part of a communities health and well being- which is what they used to be-remember being a police officer used to he something that. Was respected!!!

I found this title on Hulu and not knowing much about meth and missing Val Kilmer, I decided to give it a try. It's not a documentary I can suggest for everyone, but there is definitely a crowd out there for it and for reasons that aren't portrayed in the description. Yes this is about meth, for the first half of the movie. The second half is a realistic view of what life is like struggling at the bottom. It's not pretty and it's cliché at times, but fascinating none the less. This isn't on par with a Ken Burns documentary or even anything made above the college level. But it has a deep realism to it that's lacking in today's society. It's almost sad that true reality is a thing to be appreciated, but in a culture made for ratings, it's something that comes as a surprise. This isn't really a surprise to everyone either, but it's an insight to the daily life of living in a trailer park or just the constant struggle to keep afloat that thousands of people go through every day.