Street Fight: A Film by Marshall Curry (2007)

DVD

Cory Booker, a 32 year old Yale Law graduate decides to run for Mayor of Newark, NJ. However, he finds himself up against incumbent Sharpe James and from the word go things get ugly. There is voter intimidation, campaign harassment and other goings on, as we see that local politics can be just as ugly as National ones. Since Newark is a small area (when compared with the rest of the world), we are given a very interesting look at the "on the street" campaign process. It is as grassroots as they come but it soon becomes clear that larger forces want Sharpe James in power. At it's core this film is about the Old Guard vs. the New Guard and just how resistant to change a lot of people can be.

Director, editor, producer Marshall Curry follows Cory Booker but he isn't trying to do a smear job on Sharpe James. At it's core this film is a very interesting look at who we are as country, how we look and think about one another, and how those perceptions can be manipulated. Street Fight is the kind of movie that sadly goes unnoticed when it shouldn't.

Interview With Director Marshall Curry
The questions appear on the screen in white on black titles and then we see Curry answer them. They range from why he wanted to make this film, to how he got granted the access that he did, to what he was hoping to accomplish by making this documentary. There isn't anything too amazing about this section, but it does open up a lot about how the film was made. We get to hear about shooting conditions, his personal impressions of the candidates, and just about everything else viewers probably wondered as they screened this film.

For some reason, just by looking at the packaging, I knew that I was going to like this film. I can only imagine the amount of footage that Marshall Curry had to work with, but he really seems to have cut through all the red tape and made this movie very easy to understand. You don't have to be from New Jersey, you don't have to know anything about the political process, other than that it comes down to two people and which one can get their message out most effectively.

Street Fight is a great movie because it manages to convey all of it's ideas without really stacking the deck. Sure it presents a case for who should probably be the Mayor of Newark, I got the impression that Curry was much more fair than other documentary filmmakers.