At a powderkeg moment in American policing, The Force goes deep inside the embattled Oakland Police Department as it struggles to reform itself amid growing local controversy. Winner of the Documentary Directing Award at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, filmmaker Peter Nicks (The Waiting Room) embedded with the department over the course of two years to follow its serial efforts to recast itself. The film focuses on the new chief brought in to effect reform at the very moment the Black Lives Matter movement emerges to demand police accountability and racial justice both in Oakland and across the nation.
Although it has its imperfections, The Force stands out for its uniquely equitable treatment of law enforcement as a complex organism necessitating difficult incremental changes.
A strong film that tackles a charged subject in a fair and even-handed manner. The Force will give viewers of all social and political persuasions much to think about afterwards.
Nicks has crafted and important and timeless film that hopefully one day we'll be able to look back upon as history far removed from the current moment. Here's hoping.
... we see why it's so hard for minorities to feel like they can trust those assigned to protect them. Two communities pull in opposite directions, perhaps permanently.
Nicks doesn't deal in heroes and villains - the police and the community activists all get nuanced portrayals. But when mistakes are made, no one gets off the hook either.
A fascinating doc just being able to see how things really work within the police department compared to what we see in press conferences and through the media.
Seeming transparency, earnest meetings, and revised training procedures all turn out not to have revealed the rotten core of business-as-usual ethics after all.
The result, unusual in a documentary involving the police and the public, is a film that does not advocate for anything but the truth, one that aims to show what happens on both sides of an issue rather than coming down in favor of one or the other.