The Interrupters

The problem with gang violence in Chicago hasn't changed much (for better or worse) in decades. In that light, "The Interrupters" can't be considered timely, and it certainly doesn't expose a new and growing problem. But in focusing on a group of dedicated violence interrupters, writer Alex Kotlowitz and documentary filmmaker Steve James ("Hoop Dreams"), stepping away from his usual sports focus, capture the cycle of violence in such a complete way that you can finally start to see how it could in fact end.

CeaseFire is a violence prevention group that largely consists of former convicts and people who have spent time in prison. They dedicate a large portion of their time to being present in the communities where violence strikes and stopping conflicts before they escalate into violence. They also make themselves available as resources and confidants to individuals in need of a calming influence.

Essentially, these interrupters do what the police can't, even though none of the subjects come out and say it directly, nor does James imply it in a heavy-handed fashion. The people in these neighborhoods don't trust the police and fear the police, whereas these interrupters are adult role models who they can relate to/who can relate to them, people they respect.

James chronicles a year from summer through spring, or the most violent time of year to a time of year when hope grows anew. He focuses on the efforts of three violence interrupters and a few of the young people they each reach out to during the course of this year.

The first is Ameena Matthews, daughter of notorious Chicago gang leader Jeff Fort, who at one point became involved in a drug ring. She's easily the most magnetic figure in the film and given that families of violence victims seek her comfort specifically, it says a lot about her strength as a community leader. Throughout the film she delivers powerful and moving speeches suggestive of her strength, but as she works with a loving but emotionally troubled teenager named Caprysha, we learn even she has moments of doubt.

Next is Cobe Williams, more soft spoken, but whose prison time give him a street cred that finds him able to talk to and work with some hostile individuals. His work with a gangbanger named Flamo, who he comes into contact with at a serious boiling point, is one of the more powerful arcs in the film.

Lastly there's Eddie Bocanegra, who does art work with students but spent half his life in prison for murder. His redemption story proves more than any that there's hope for those who make these fatal mistakes.

"The Interrupters" explores the deepest depths and root causes of violence, enough to even the most self-assured pacifist consider reality that is the cycle of violence and that it's not simply a matter of just not letting it be an option. Many of the subjects discuss the role of parents being there or not there and how they are role models whether they want to be or not, as well as how violence has become part of the culture because of the value placed on pride and ego.

Like any great documentary, "The Interrupters" is a conversation starter. Yes, it's edited in a powerful way will elicit emotion, but there are so many discussions worth having based on what the subjects say and do and what we observe. It's really hard to capture the entire spectrum of the conversation on a subject as general as violence, but somehow James manages to do it. And nothing he presents is black and white (not referring to race); if you pay attention through the entire film, you rationally cannot make generalizations about the roots of violence.

There are moments when the film drags a bit as it takes a step back to cover the human interest element of the film, the tragedy of it all. That's important, but its call to action is loud and impossible to ignore, so much so that you want it to continue its search for an answer, or in this case, to see if the work CeaseFire does really makes a difference.

It certainly does. "The Interrupters" proves as much. At the same time, we become so aware of how they can only be in once place at a time. A handful of occasions during the film we hear someone talk about some act of violence unfolding somewhere else right now as the camera is rolling. It's a wake-up call that unless the City of Chicago or the government take an extensive, grass-roots approach to ending violence, there's no way that even these amazing individuals can end it.

~Steven C

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This film takes a year-long look at the work of a group of volunteers trying to reduce murders and violence in inner-city areas of Chicago. They do this by intervening wherever possible, trying to mediate on the streets between those reading to kill over as little as $5 or a perceived slight, cool the anger before it spills over into bloodshed. The majority of the volunteers have a background in the gangs themselves, have served jail time but were able to get out while they still have their lives. The film follows three of the volunteers during a year where the profile of the Chicago murder rate is raised to the national level.

From the director of Hoop Dreams, this film gets right down onto the streets of Chicago and, while the volunteers are dealing with people ready to kill, the camera is right there too – getting good access and surprisingly natural footage from everyone involved. For the most part it is the capturing of this world that makes the film engaging because while many people (particularly on the internet!) would like to pretend they live in tough situations and are ready to turn to violence over nothing, the majority in the western world are not and certainly for me, I appreciated an insight into the world of those who are ready to pick up a knife and stab someone because of a slight on their family. The camera captures a real natural air when situations are at their most flammable and also in the one-on-one chats, but it doesn't quite manage it when there is a group. Sometimes when break-throughs are being made with groups, it does feel a little uncomfortable and I got the sense that the camera was becoming a little bit of an intrusion.

Likewise, although it isn't overdone, the film also uses sentimental music a bit too often over the top of insights or breakthroughs – and it did annoy me a little bit because none of it actually needed this music. None of these things are bad though, just a little negative in terms of impact. This is covered by how good the chosen subjects are – in particular Ameena and Cobe. To my external ears they occasionally sound uncomfortable or odd or even a bit too much like they are saying platitudes and hyperbole, but yet they work and generally their words and attitudes make an impact – even if they don't always make a lasting impact on a person's life (although the goal is always to get through the immediate threat of violence). James makes good use of them and in Ameena he finds someone likable, charming, intelligent and empathetic – she doesn't just "say" what she is doing and feeling, she lives it and it comes out in every word; wisely she is the heart of the film.

Overall The Interrupters is not a perfect film because it does occasionally overdo the sentimentality and gives the subject a sense of worthiness that they may deserve but that the film doesn't benefit from. It also doesn't have much of a sharp investigatory edge, a little of which it could have done with a little bit of, but otherwise the film is engaging and moving thanks to the ground-level access and the force of the personality and bravery of the volunteers focused on.

Chicago, Baltimore, Oakland, Detroit – synonyms for American crime, places where young men kill one another in the streets. Bleak background noise in the national news, with dim flares of outrage at especially gruesome killings.

On the subject of solutions, our imaginations are dismally poor and usually limited to applying money or violence in some form. More police, more arrests, longer sentences, talk of the National Guard on the streets.

The Interrupters seem to have a better gimmick. The violence prevention group CeaseFire recruited a group of tattooed ex-gang-members in Chicago, most of whom turned away from crime after cooling off in hospitals or prisons. They know the locals, and they have credibility where cops, teachers and politicians don't.

The film follows several of them: a tough gang heiress turned devout Muslim, an imposing man with several prison terms for drugs and violence, and a soft-spoken Latino out after serving 14 years for murder. Interrupters are, in effect, roaming street counselors; unlike the armchair type, they usually find themselves between two or more people who are about to begin stabbing one another. They are to ordinary counselors what BASE jumpers are to people who feel proud of taking stairs.

The rare and valuable insight of the film is how, over the course of a year, the counselors manage to talk down people who're about to do horrible things, and how these people arrive at such a place to begin with. None of them are remorseless sociopaths, and none of them appear to want or relish violence. They want the best for themselves, they value their families, and yet some have come to the verge of actual fratricide. Why? Hopelessness, poor impulse control, lack of role models, a gang tribalism that feeds on vacuum and anarchy.

It's amazing how many fights and murders aren't motivated by gain. They're essentially the result of undereducated boys applying the Cheney Doctrine every day on street level – "get them before they get you." On these streets, nobody trusts each other, everybody is armed and nobody is willing to back down from a fight. Tempers can flare instantly, and the killers are often as baffled by their own crimes as anybody else.

Somehow, the Interrupters pull young people out of this mindset. It takes a heroic amount of trust and patience. It doesn't work all the time. But it works way more often than one imagines it should.

There is a large and influential contingent in our country which holds that the only solution to inner-city violence is to tighten the screws even further. To their Klingon eyes, the CeaseFire approach probably looks like so much liberal mollycoddling of people who just ought to have their heads busted on the pavement more often. One of the thicker ironies of "The Interrupters" is that this Old Testament law enforcement mentality comes from precisely the same place as the bloody retaliations and preemptive violence by South Side gang-bangers.

I listened to the young ruffians, and heard the words of steely-eyed Giulianis: not backing down, not showing weakness, getting tough, getting serious, showing them who's boss. Once you realize that "tough on crime" politicians count on the same tactics to intimidate gangs that gangs use to intimidate one another, you may recognize the same lustful rage in yourself as well, and subside to embarrassed head-scratching.

The Interrupters talk about the legal trickery of being involved in potential crimes, and sometimes the organization has no choice but to get law enforcement on the case. However, their strength is not in meting out punishment, but understanding – and it's astonishing to see violent young toughs respond and open up. Even with all the money, cops and technology that America can scratch together, maybe the best way to solve social problems is still through one person talking to another.

I really feel that movies like this are worth it - to see and educate oneself. One of the problems in America today are that the downtrodden and invisible people have no voice or medium through which to tell their stories. Movies like this show us ... how powerful these stories truly are.

The Interrupters themselves were my favorite characters. I wish I could see more and more movies on people who have truly transformed their lives from hopeless to meaningful. There are many out there - fighting the good fight, against all odds. And the best outcome of a movie like this - is to feel transformed yourself, inadvertently, because you've become inspired to take back your power and use it to be the best person you can be, in whatever your situation is.

Steve James is a remarkable documentary filmmaker who has given us a series of amazing films starting with Hoop Dreams that explore some of the more difficult issues in our society including race, poverty, crime, and violence. His film on the Trial of Allen Iverson revealed the complex racial discourse at work beneath his hometown of Hampton, VA. His most recent film, The Interrupters, screened today at Austin's SXSW Film Festival. It is a powerful film that captures the plague of urban violence that plagues are cities – in this case Chicago – and goes beyond documenting to show a group of activists (many with troubled pasts) working for a group called Ceasefire.

Ceasefire seeks to engage troubled young people and interrupt their dysfunctional behavior patterns of anger, crime, drug use, irresponsibility and violence. The Interrupters are acting heroically to try to save their imploding self-destructive communities. While the footage and the story are compelling, it could still use some editing since at over 2.5 hours it is a little too long. The length is understandable since James filmed over 300 hours, but it still needs to be paired down further to capture a manageable story.

The other problem with the film is more complex. The Interrupters are fighting on the front lines in their efforts to save their communities. But the fight that they are engaged in is almost impossible, because their personal and human efforts to save individuals are divorced from a larger political reality. The film is a deeply personal and human, but it fails to address the deeper social problems in education, unemployment that have created the epidemic of violence. They are treating the symptoms of those who are already infected without searching out the causes of the disease.

Sadly, the problems of the poor have disappeared from our political discourse since the collapse of the "War on Poverty." The current administration – led by our first urban President in decades - has failed to offer any sort of serious urban or anti-poverty agenda. Our political discourse focuses on the "middle class" and pretends as if poverty doesn't exist. Poverty has ceased to exist on American TV and in most of our news media coverage. Middle Class America has stopped seeing poverty which is quietly hidden away outside of our consciousness. The social contract that binds our society together is broken. We need far more films like the Interrupters to confront the American public with the realities of poverty and violence that are eating away at the soul of our society.

Hopefully, many people will watch a film like The Interrupters and ask themselves two questions: What can I do as an individual to help groups like this make a difference in my community? What can I do as a citizen to get my government to act to make the structural changes that are needed to transform these communities?