There once was a a movement, mostly active in New York and a period in which movies were shot very raw, in an almost documentary like style. These type of movies try to give you an insight on the daily lives of often poor and struggling ethic groups, living in a certain part of town, as if it's really a documentary you are watching. Perhaps the best and also best known example of this style of film-making was John Cassavetes' 1959 movie "Shadows".
The movie is shot in the fashion of a documentary but that really doesn't mean that it also feels like one though. It's still very obviously an acted out movie, with scripted situations in it. The approach to it all still makes it feel like a very raw and also straight-forward movie, about crime, drugs and racial issues, all set in the Harlem ghetto, in New York City.
It's not necessarily a movie that follows a clear main plot line, which is consistent with this style of film-making but it's not really something that I like. Sure, it works out real fine for 20-30 minutes or so but after a while things just start to get less interesting to follow because there isn't really anything happening within the story and it isn't ever really going anywhere. I did understand the points the movie tried to make, with its raw approach, depicting the hard and desperate life within the ghetto but it just never came across as anything provoking or powerful.
It still could had been fine if only the movie had some more intriguing and likable characters in it. I don't really feel like we ever got to know any of them, which also doesn't really make you care about any of them or what happens within the movie its story. So no, this movie just isn't for me, though I'm still able to appreciate it and admire the way it got made and shot.
So still a movie I appreciated watching, just never one I ever loved.
7/10
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