What I’m Watching: A flawed but enjoyable crime drama

Date: 4/14/2020

From Redbox: 21 Bridges

Would video stores, if they were still around, have been deemed essential today? They were once an essential part of communities offering up the latest releases.

In many ways the closest thing we have now is the Redbox located at a variety of drug and grocery stores. There is a certain similarity of looking at the screen and scanning the titles for either something you missed in theaters or a film that looks interesting but is unknown to you.

“21 Bridges” seemed to be the right title to rent from the mini video store. It was a major release with an up and coming star that didn’t click as well as it should have at the box office.

Chadwick Boseman plays New York City Police Detective Andre Davis, a second-generation officer whose father was killed in the line of duty. During his time on the force, Davis has become known for the number of people he has killed in the line of duty. Despite that, he is respected for his skills in reconstructing a crime scene.

He is called into a case in which seven police officers and one civilian are killed during what would appear to be the theft of 50 kilos of uncut cocaine at a Brooklyn restaurant.

The FBI wants to take over the case, but Davis and his superiors won’t give up jurisdiction. Davis and a narcotics officer Frankie Burns (played by Sienna Miller) agree the thieves are in Manhattan and Davis proposes sealing off the island  – closing among other things – the 21 bridges that connect it to the rest of the city.

The FBI gives the police about four hours to catch them and agree to close down access to and from Manhattan. Davis and Burns now must track them down and capture them, although the captain of the 85th Precinct where the crime took place urges Davis to kill the thieves instead.

Director Brian Kirk keeps the film moving quickly and the cast turns grounded, realistic performances. The script, though, is unusual as it tips its hand in the first few minutes, allowing the audience to understand there is a major fact about the case that they know but Davis does not.

The film becomes at that moment much less of a mystery and much more of a suspense film. The difficulty is the film doesn’t build up too much suspense because our hero never really seems to be in danger from any of the parties involved.

Nonetheless, the film is handsome, well paced and has good performances and is well worth the $2 rental I paid for the Blu-ray.

On Netflix: How to Fix a Drug Scandal

This new four-part documentary series tells the stories of two chemists working for the two state crime labs, analyzing drug evidence in the first 12 years of the 2000s.

Both young women were highly qualified and did not know one another. Their actions, though, resulted in the overturning court rulings and releasing tens of thousands of people who were convicted of drug offences.

Annie Dookhan was working at the Hinton State Laboratory in Boston, while Sonja Farak worked at the lab at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

The two women’s stories are quite different. Dookhan faked thousands of tests on drug evidence that was used to convict people, apparently in an effort to be seen as a star employee and to curry praise from prosecutors. Farak was a drug addict who was using the very drugs she was supposed to test. She even made her own crack cocaine – which she was smoking during work – at the state crime lab.

The two women did not know each other, but their actions resulted ultimately in similar outcomes.

This documentary by Eric Lee Carr is much, much more than just a true crime story. It is a decisive indictment against how the Commonwealth was running these labs and subsequently a discussion about the nature of justice in Massachusetts.

Through interviews with the participants, recreations of key moments described in grand jury testimony and archival news coverage from the time, Carr constructs a thorough and compelling look at a very damaged system.

For people in this part of Massachusetts, they will quickly recognize places we see everyday and members of the local media who covered the Farak case.

This is an outstanding documentary series.