Just watched it, very entertaining. But it amazed me how corrupt, stupid, idiotic, racist and unsympathetic Sharpe came off - is it really that one-sided in real life, or is the documentary just very biased towards booker?
shareWelcome to NJ. We don't exactly elect the brightest people.
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I lived in Newark back in the '60s when a crooked thug named Hugh Addonizio was the mayor (he, like many of his predecessors, wound up in prison on a corruption conviction). I haven't been back there in a long time, but after watching this, the first thing I thought was, "Jesus, nothing's changed". The Central Ward still looks like Hiroshima after the A-bomb was dropped on it, the cops appear to be just as crooked as they were back then, the mayor just as power-hungry and venal, the voters just as stupid--in other words, Jersey politics as usual.
I haven't seen it yet and I plan on it, but even if it is a bit biased towards Booker, Sharpe James was incredibly corrupt. I live in Newark by the way.
shareAlthough Sharpe James was incredibly corrupt, my impresion of Booker was that he was naive, inexperienced and, frankly, came across as a bit of a phony. I'm not saying he was, but that's just how he came across to me.
Having said that, I dont' think the documentary was biased at all. However, I would have liked to have seen more about what events had shaped Booker's views. He just seemed too one-dimensional.
I'm amazed that James kept being re-elected. He didn't come off particularly intelligent. He sounded like some whino in a back alley.
If Booker's one dimension is that he's smart, I'd say that's what Newark needs.
So true. The man is a thug. Sharpe sounds incredibly ignorant, trashy and surprisingly racist. His overbloated ego and overrated sense of self-importance was sickening to say the say the least.
Having said that, I don't feel the film was biased. I saw a genuine effort on the film maker's part to get Sharpe's perspective on things and he was always turned away...pretty harshly too. Sharpe's actions spoke for themselves. No ammount of editing could've made him look better, aside for completely erasing him from this movie.
I wonder if any of the politicians who backed him up every publicly spoke about this? I would be pretty embarrassed to be associated with that sorry excuse of a human being.
As for Cory, while he does seem idealistic and almost naive at times, I think he has the city's best interest at heart. I thought he was humble, trustworthy, intelligent and confident. I'd rather vote for a good human being, than a corrupted, self-serving pig.
Well said.
share"No ammount of editing could've made him look better, aside for completely erasing him from this movie."
LoL! Well-said.
I don't live in Jersey, so the ones who do will definitely know a lot more than me. But documentaries are more often than not one sided. That's not to say if anything bad happened to Booker, they wouldn't show it, but it's about the hero Booker, so they're definitely going to go for Sharpe's throat. That's just how docs work.
That being said, it was excellent, much better than I thought it would be.