Stonewall

Government action against homosexuals leads to the 1969 Stonewall Riots in NYC. Danny Winters is a runaway from Indiana. He is befriended by Ray and his group of gay friends. They struggle to find a place in the world.

Everybody is played over the top including the flat doe-eyed Danny. There is only so many Danny jaw drops that I can take. It's overwrought at almost every point. I want to say it's unflinching but it's more like pulp fiction. There are hints of artificiality which are the flat notes of this historical drama. The struggles of the fictional Danny Winters in his home town could be a compelling story by itself. Roland Emmerich's insistence of tying it to the Stonewall Riots is questionable. It's like saying the history cannot be comprehended without a white middle America protagonist. Ray is a more compelling character. The plot is also overstuffed which sidetracks the story and drags the pacing. This is problematic especially considering the needs of this important history.

Gay themed films are n abundance right now and (lesbian couples, transgender stories, more gay characters in many films) so it seems only natural that yet another film be made about the beginning of gay rights in the US. STONEWALL does that and despite the emphasis on political corruption attempting to steal the thunder from the brave gays who initiated the change to Gay Pride it works for the most part.

Many viewers will avoid the film because of the depiction of gays as being homeless, feminine street hustlers – too much so that it becomes a distraction form the other aspects of the story – but at least the message and the dates and the history are there. The plot revolves around the 1969 Stonewall Riots, the violent clash that kicked off the gay rights movement in New York City. The drama centers on Danny Winters (Jeremy Irvine), who flees to New York after an aborted coming out with Joe (Karl Glusman) and being ousted by his homophobic father (David Cubitt), leaving behind his sister Phoebe (Joey King). He finds his way to the Stonewall Inn, where he meets Trevor (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) before catching the eye of Ed Murphy (Ron Perlman), manager of the Stonewall who colludes with corrupt police and exploits homeless youth. Danny becomes close to a group of Nellie hustlers – especially Ray (Jonny Beauchamp) – and it is his association with this gay element that he eventually joins and fights for gay rights.

The cast is strong, the script by Jon Robin Baitz is less than impressive, but director Roland Emmerich manages to make the blend of history and human tragedy credible. Not a great movie, but the intentions are worthy.

There's so much wrong with this movie it's hard to know where to begin.

If you want to learn about Stonewall, there are plenty of documentaries out there that tell the story much more accurately than this does: this flick plays into the tired old cliches about how the riot started, but manages to whitewash the characters and distort events horribly. You'd be better off watching "The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson" for starters.

If you just want a well-acted, well-written period drama, there are countless other films with better acting, better character development and less cliched writing than this one. What's particularly offensive is the reliance once again on stereotypical caricatures of fat, ugly old lecherous queens, preying upon the purebred white-boy central character. Other characters (Ray being the prime example) are completely undeveloped and could have made things more interesting. And lastly, you'd be offended if you watch this after seeing the 1995 "Stonewall" to see how much Roland Emmerich simply rips off from THAT film.

Joey King as the little sister provides some momentary relief...but like a lot of missed opportunities, there's not nearly enough of her, either.

As an old-car lover, the frequent presence of 1966 Plymouths and other gorgeous 60s cars was one of the few things that saved this from being a complete disaster.

I watched Stonewall last night and did not find it to be the horrible film I expected. It was not a great film either, a solid 6 out of ten. It was visually interesting, the dialog was a bit awkward and a little boring but IMO it accurately portrayed the feeling of 1969/70. Most of the characters were poor LGBT runaways living on the streets who were POC, transgender, dykes/lesbians and a variety of ethnicities. All the cops were white, mostly portrayed as assholes. Was the movie flawed? Absolutely. Perhaps the biggest flaw was calling the film Stonewall. Still I think it is worth seeing. If you can get past expectations of it being a historically correct documentary and watch it as a coming of age/out story about a young man from the country running to the city (which many did), at the end you can get a real reminder why we celebrate LGBT Pride today.

Roland Emmerich's biggest mistake was calling the movie "Stonewall" and marketing it as if it were the actual story of the rebellion. It gave people the wrong expectation. It's not a movie about Stonewall. It's a movie about a Midwestern gay man whose story takes place on Christopher street at the time of the riots. It's also in part the story of the first person he meets in New York, played by Jonny Beauchamp, who steals the movie. It's basically a very oddball romance and coming-out story. People wanted an accurate historical epic about the importance of the riots, and the movie isn't that and was never meant to be.

For what it really is, it's a very good movie. Like most "historical" movies there are inaccuracies. The worst distortion is giving Danny the "first brick." That's upset a lot of people, but in the dramatic structure of the movie it's as much about Danny's becoming himself--a gay man throwing away his shame--as it is about the situation he finds himself in. The police are depicted as "bad" in the black-and-white morality of an old-fashioned hero-versus-villain Saturday morning serial. But beyond those inaccuracies and the impossibility of recreating Christopher Street as it was (which seems to be especially upsetting to some New York viewers), the movie is as faithful to its surrounding event as any Shakespeare history play to its, including sympathetic depictions of a very diverse neighborhood of LGBT types.

As a long-time gay activist, I liked the movie a great deal. It feels real as I remember things to have been 46 years ago. I felt a genuine emotional rush during and after the riot. The movie ends with typical historical clean-ups, telling us what became of the real people, like Marsha P Johnson and others who appear in the movie, and mentioning the additional nights of rioting and how they went on to be regarded in LGBT history.

For me the saddest thing about this film is the divisions it's exposed among various components of the LGBT community. This history belongs to all of us, black, brown, white, gay, lesbian, transgender, drag queen, troll, twink, and so on; if we can't honor it in all of our variations, no one else will either. Go to see it as a good story well told, not as a factual documentary. I write this knowing some of you won't be able to, some of you won't want to, and some of you won't believe me. I wish there were something I could do about that, but there isn't.