The day after Thanksgiving 2012, four male African-American teenagers in Florida pull into a gas station for cigarettes and gum, but a 47-year-old white man in the car parked next to them outside objects to their loud music. Michael Dunn later says in his testimony that he thought one of the boys, Jordan Davis, had a firearm and he perceived a threat on his life, resulting in a shooting that left 17-year-old Davis dead. Most likely, what really set Dunn off was the disrespect shown from a teenager towards a middle-aged man...a generation-gap problem that has existed since the dawn of civilization. The director of this emotional documentary, Marc Silver, takes the racial aspect of the case and builds and edits his film around it. We see Jordan's parents grieving his loss, we see his mother praying and worshipping and setting up a tiny cross in the sand on the beach, but hardly any time is spent on Dunn's fiancée (who comes across as an honest, interesting woman in court)--we don't even get her reactions after the verdicts are read. Silver wants to keeps a stirred pot boiling, and he isn't fascinated enough in the case as a whole to be completely objective (he's convicted Dunn already). The verdicts in both trials (this a result of a mistrial called on one of the counts, which was then retried off-camera) are fair, based on the actions of a man who was demanding respect by force. Dunn's motivations in that split-second when he took out his gun aren't probed in depth; Silver wants to reveal Dunn as a liar (which is true) and as a man with racist attitudes (which is debatable). When you come out of a documentary with more questions than answers, perhaps the film hasn't done a succinct enough job examining the central situation. We understand that Jordan's family is devastated, that he was a solid young man just out for a good time with his buddies (each shown to be completely innocent of malice). The trial judge says, "There are no winners or losers here," though, sadly, I don't think anyone heard him. **1/2 from ****
