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EUR FILM ('Giuliani Time') REVIEW: Documentary Reveals Rudy Giuliani as Racist and Repressive Mayor.
In this rush to canonize him for his handling of the attacks on the World Trade Center, the world came to forget how, for eight years, he had ruled the city with an iron-fist, bitterly dividing it along ethnic lines by implementing policies which favored whites and the rich over minorities and the poor.
The film Giuliani Time doesn’t so much tarnish Sir Rudy’s image as simply set the record straight. It takes its title from the phrase which racist cops were reported to have chanted while ramming a broomstick up suspect Abner Louima’s rectum during an interrogation in a precinct bathroom after an unwarranted arrest for a very minor matter.
Using the code words “Zero Tolerance” and “Quality of Life,” Giuliani had given the NYPD the go ahead to intimidate and mistreat not only squeejee guys and the homeless, but anyone who wasn’t white with such impunity and contempt. The result was a reign of terror in which minority communities were turned into police states where trigger-happy detectives could shoot an unarmed black man 41 times knowing that Rudy had their back and they’d get off scot-free.
In this very informative biopic, we learn that the source of Giuliani’s penchant for brutality and strong-arm tactics was probably in being raised by his father, Harold, a gun-toting Mafiosi enforcer who broke kneecaps with a baseball bat for a major gambling operation in Brooklyn. His dad even served time in Sing Sing, though Rudy was never one to acknowledge being raised by a mobster.
Giuliani Time includes damning interviews with folks like Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew (1995-1999) who criticizes his former boss for implementing education policies which were “racist and class-biased.” Giuliani’s predecessors David Dinkins and Ed Koch weigh-in, too. The latter refers to Rudy as “a combination of Pinochet and Caligula” because “he accepts no dissent and uses his power to punish.”
Ralph Nader, the ACLU’s Norman Siegel, Reverend Al Sharpton, Attorney Ron Kuby and a host of other luminaries pile on, taking turns to remind us of an administration which deserves to be remembered in history not for the clean-up of the Twin Towers, but for its utter lack of compassion for the impoverished and working classes.
Excellent (4 stars)
Unrated
Running time: 118 minutes
Studi Cinema Libre Studio
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