Saturday, September 16, 2006

American Hardcore - Toronto International Film Festival

American Hardcore is a documentary about the Hardcore Punk Scene in the USA (and Canada when they refer to D.O.A.) from 1980 - 1986. The film feature interviews with most of the key players and features rare live footage (but not really a lot).

There are a few interesting interview moments and some decent Bad Brains footage but as a film this movie was very poorly put together (which is surprising because the director said they had been working on it for 5 years). It almost felt like they just took a bunch of clips and just randomly threw them together. Someone else described it well when they said that the order of the clips could have run completely in reverse and it wouldnt have made a difference. For a film about a genre of music that is generally fast, tight, very structured with a definative political message, this film seems to lack any sort of cohesive stucture or point (it was hard to see what they were trying to say with it). This could have been done much better especially seeing as the film makers said they had hundreds of hours of interview material. Die hard fans only.

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