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Fantastic!

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

... and that was ponderous to me considering some of the evidence. First, the brutality of the crime - a young woman gang raped and nearly beaten to death with a pipe to the point where even today she has some cognitive problems - grabbed headlines nationwide.The five young men charged with the crime all confessed. It seemed so open and shut. But there were problems. All five confessions told different accounts of the crime. The crime scene itself showed that there was not enough room for five suspects. And most concerning, the DNA evidence from the crime matched none of the suspects. The prosecution's explanation -there must be a sixth rapist that they didn't catch. The victim herself could not help with any ID because she had been unconscious throughout the attack.What was not clear to me is how much of this the jury that convicted the five got to hear. Back in 1990, DNA was new, and not really understood by the public like it is today. All five were convicted on all counts and got fairly short sentences considering the brutality of the crime - 5 to 10 years - mainly because all but one was a minor.In 2002, the actual rapist crossed paths with one of the Central Park Five in prison - they had a short conversation - and the actual rapist began to talk to other cellmates about how these other people were doing time for a rape he had done. It was only then that investigators interviewed him, found his DNA matched that at the crime scene, and that his confession matched every detail of the crime and cleared up some details of the crime that the police had never been able to figure out. Very quickly thereafter the Central Park Five had their convictions vacated. Yes, they could go back to their lives, but they had lost half their teens and all of their 20's. As you get older you realize the worst thing you can waste or be robbed of is time.There were a few eyebrow raising moments besides the obvious ones. For one, the alibi of the Central Park Five was that they had been beating up and harassing people in another part of Central Park at the time the rape was committed, so these kids were hardly Sunday school teachers. The second eyebrow raising moment was when one African American journalist said that the black community turned against the five because many had been "harassed, raped, pushed around, and pocket book snatched" by young black males. I'm sorry, but what crime does not belong in this list? As long as a community does not see rape as the ultimate violation of a human being, just shy of murder, then any conversation about crime and punishment is probably going to have a disconnect. Then there was Donald Trump (yes THAT Trump) putting full page ads wanting the death penalty. I mean - Really? the woman was not dead, the suspects were minors.I'd recommend this documentary. It just lets the participants and the facts speak for themselves, like Ken Burns' documentaries usually do. Definitely worth looking at if you remember the crime but only faintly remember the exoneration.

Social injustice and the failure of the justice system has long been a favourite topic for documentary film-makers. It's been done to death, sometimes raising enough attention for the case that it leads directly or indirectly to releasing the incarcerated (The Thin Blue Line (1988), the Paradise Lost trilogy (1996-2011)), or exposes enough holes in the story to make you doubt the effectiveness of police interrogation and/or the legal system as a whole (Brother's Keeper (1992), Capturing the Friedmans (2003)). It's estimated that 10,000 innocent people go to jail every year, so naturally, this kind of thing keeps rearing it's ugly head, and it makes for riveting and gob-smacking viewing.The 'Central Park Five' are Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise, youths aged between 13-15 in 1989, who found themselves in the wrong place, in the wrong city, at the wrong time. Trisha Meili, a young jogger running through Central Park, New York, was viciously beaten, raped, and left for dead by Matias Reyes, a notorious rapist who confessed to the crime years later. The five boys were in a group of 30 or so others, some causing havoc and attacking people, when the police descended on them. Through long and intense interrogations, the five made false confessions to witnessing the crime, incriminating one another with the promise of being allowed to go home.The first hour of The Central Park Five is its finest. Ken Burns, directing here with his daughter Sarah and her husband David McMahon, is a historian at heart, digging out terrific archive footage of a city consumed by crime and racial tension, in the midst of the AIDS outbreak and the savage crack wars. The young boys, all black or Latino, were nothing but scapegoats for the NYPD, who were looking for a quick and tidy conviction. The brutal witch-hunt they suffered following their arrest, and the lazy role of the press - labelling the boys actions before the assault as 'wildings' and failing to do any real investigating of their own - is representative of the social and racial divide. This was a time when the city averaged six homicides a day.There is also a wealth of footage showing the boys' 'confessions', which are fascinating to see unravel. There is a special moment when Korey Wise is shown a picture of the victim's bruised and battered head, and the sound that leaves his mouth leaves you in doubt of his incapability of committing such an act. The second half of the film left me frustrated. There are no big, satisfying moments of anyone getting their just deserts, and the Five, now released from prison and cleared of guilt, shows a startling lack of bitterness to the ordeal they experienced. There's certainly a lack of anger to the film, both by those involved and the directors, and it leaves things a little cold. But perhaps that's the point, that reality really is that harsh, and closure is hard to come by.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

"Central Park Five" serves as a warning about legal incompetence, innocent lives destroyed, and a judicial system vulnerable to manipulation. The documentary details a nightmare scenario for five Harlem teenagers facing hard time, and the condemnation of America for a crime they didn't commit. The production sets the situation immediately, introducing the viewer to NYC in the 1980s, where Wall Street is in the process of rebuilding its reputation, while crack ravages the inner city, creating an explosive racial divide.The film examines the infamous 1989 Central Park Jogger case, where a young white woman is brutally beaten and raped in New York's Central Park. At the same time, a group of five young black and Latino teenagers were quickly arrested for the crime and imprisoned. Following swift arrests by law enforcement officials, the prosecutors proudly declared the conviction as a step forward in the reclamation of a the city. Despite the lack of concrete evidence, all five are found guilty on multiple charges. Raymond Santana, Yusef Salaam, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, and Kharey Wise each spent between six to 13 years in prison, professing their innocence, while maintaining that it was a coerced confession to the crime. However, a chance encounter between the oldest of them and convicted serial rapist Matias Reyes, who years later yields his free admission of sole responsibility for the crime, and the claim is further substantiated with DNA evidence.The documentary's approach seamlessly blends past and present, re-examines the assault, and walks you through what happened to the teenagers, from their arrest through their exoneration. Burns captures the complexity of history with startling results, yet "The Central Park Five" isn't quite as comprehensive as hoped, and fails to add anything substantively new to the story. Additionally, an element of balance is missing that would have turned a very good documentary into an exceptional one."The Central Park Five" presents the facts of the case with clarity, and it is a courageous, revealing look at the often complex and broken legal system in the United States. Unfortunately, there is no avoiding the conclusion presented by historian Craig Steven Wilder: "Rather than tying (the case) up in a bow and thinking that there was something we can take away from it, and that we'll be better people, I think what we really need to realize is that we're not very good people."

I was leery of this despite a friend's recommendation. I didn't live in NY at the time and basically ignored the news reports. So, this film I found fascinating, should be required for all law students and certainly worthwhile for everyone else. It could have been 5 or 10 minutes shorter but frankly I feel that way about most films. I had a bit of confusion sorting out the Five and their adult selves. (One of them changed to or from a Muslim-sounding name, I think). Also it's a very interesting portrait of NYC circa 1990. I'd like to know more about why the civil case is still "unresolved". The tone of the film is indignant but, more importantly, it is truth-seeking. That's why it's so compelling: we viewers want to find out what happened.