Critics reviews

Now, of course, New York is a much different place. But as this probing and essential documentary points out, the question still remains: Who does the city belong to?

Photo montages and archival news footage provide context, anatomizing the violence, volatility, and demonization of young black men that infected the city in the 80s, and reminding us of our nation's long history of lynching black men for imagined crimes against white women. That long view of history—a Burns family specialty—gives this sad, infuriating story the depth and despair of tragedy.

Measured in tone and outraged in its argument, it is an emotionally stirring, at times crushingly depressing cinematic call to witness. It's also frustrating because while it re-examines the assault on the jogger and painstakingly walks you through what happened to the teenagers — from their arrest through their absolution — it fails to add anything substantively new.

Working with his daughter and son-in-law, documentary legend Ken Burns (The Civil War) does a thorough job unpacking a miscarriage of justice, letting the five speak in recent postjail interviews, as well as through ancient video testimony, the accused shaking like the boys they were. The attention to detail is fine-grained, especially on the slippery slope of plea bargaining.

Though relentlessly and admirably logical, the movie constantly glosses over the buried human element: the complicated influence the event and its sociopolitical aura might have had on the minds of those involved... The doc is most effective when it takes fact for granted and delves instead into affect, especially by way of the Five's self-reflections on their mistreatment.

Co-directors Ken Burns (yes, him), Sarah Burns (his daughter), and David McMahon (his son-in-law) build upon the already spectacular research of Sarah's 2011 book, The Central Park Five. The documentary's balance between extensive period footage and remarkably intimate present-day interviews underscores both the agonizing amount of time that has elapsed since the original crime and the startling youthfulness of the alleged perpetrators at the time.

The Central Park Five isn't The Thin Blue Line (1988), and Burns, McMahon and Burns aren't Errol Morris. Nor are they the cinematic equivalent of a law firm that succeeds in proving the innocence of their clients to us jury members in the audience. They are rather the effective and didactic reporters who denounce the role played by the media in the conviction.