Country:
USA
Recognizable Faces:
None
Directed By:
William Gazecki
A good documentary is ideally supposed to floor you like a overhand right and yet leave you conscious and angry enough to make you want to fight back. This is exactly what RECKLESS INDIFFERENCE does. If you don't like cops and highly doubt the fairness of the judiciary system like me, this movie is going to hit the spot. But I'm going to go even further than that. I was especially moved by RECKLESS INDIFFERENCE because it tells the story of a world I know. A world where kids are let loose in the street without supervision, because their parents don't really care what they're doing, because they don't think they can be up to anything bad. A world where drugs and petty criminality aren't an effect of poverty, but of boredom and lack of foreseeable future. That's the world I grew up in, as well as Jimmy Farris, Mike McLoren, Brandon Hine, Micah Holland, Jason Holland, Chris Velardo and Tony Miliotti. I walked away from it without a hitch, but they were not so lucky.
Chris, Brandon, Tony and the Holland brothers were hanging out one night, looking to get high and drunk, because they had nothing better to do. They rolled out on a tear, stole the wallet of a young mother and decided for a really obscure reason to drive up to Mike McLoren's house, where he was smoking pot with his friend Jimmy in his "fort" (which really was just a teenage debauchery spot where the evidence he sold drugs was found). For some obscure reason, a fight broke out, both Jimmy and Mike got stabbed by Jason Holland and Jimmy died from a stab wound to the heart. The mechanism of justice starts to unravel and the five kids get arrested. Jason admits he stabbed the two kids, but they are tried for armed robbery which implicates every member of the event to the same level. Four of the five kids get life in prison, three without the possibility of parole. Chris Velardo, for being the driver gets eleven years in jail. Now, everybody's life is fucked.
I'm not saying everybody but Jason Holland should have walked away from this without a slap on the wrist. I would've agreed to prison terms for everybody. But life for little shithead teenagers? Something in this trial went wrong and it's what RECKLESS INDIFFERENCE is putting under the microscope. First of all, Jimmy Farris' dad, Jimmy Sr. is a LAPD cop and it's EVIDENT that he had something to do with the armed robbery conviction. William Gazecki proves in RECKLESS INDIFFERENCE that he is lying through his teeth. He said he wasn't present during the interrogation as everybody else interviewed, including the prosecutor says he was. Witnesses saw him talk to the judge. The chief of police of the LAPD got involved and wrote a letter to the judge asking to make an example out of the four kids. It's a teenage scuffle gone wrong, could have anybody shown a little perspective?
The accusation is almost solely based on Mike McLoren's testimony, which is highly disputable. First, Gazecki plays the tapes of the interrogation where he changes his version many times, saying his memory of the events was bad (understandably so, he got stabbed many times and lost a lot of blood). Also, he's a drug dealer. There are photographic evidence of his drawers being full of weed and cash. If one of those seven kids was on the wrong path, it was him. Prosecutor Jeff Semow is asking the jury to believe McLoren's testimony because there are elements that incriminate himself for his weed traffic in it, but it's later proved in appeal that McLoren had inked a deal with the prosecution giving him immunity for his testimony. Also, he refused to participate in the documentary. How can his side of the story have more worth than Brandon Hine's? Harvard lawyer Alan M. Dershowitz puts it best. They have been condemned by a judiciary fiction, buildt by Mike McLoren and the prosecution.
But I think what angered me the most in this documentary was the parent. They lost a son, yes I understand that. It's devastating. But Jimmy Farris Sr. denied the right to a fair trial to these kids. He played himself as being the better human being. I was shocked to hear Jimmy's mother sermon the other parents after the verdict, saying it should serve as an example to keep an eye on your kids. I wanted to take her by the shoulders, shake her up and yell: "WHAT THE FUCK, LADY? YOUR KID WAS SMOKING WEED WITH THE LOCAL DEALER THAT NIGHT. WHO KNOWS WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF HE HAD A WEAPON ON HIM?" But like I said. The kids deserved punishment. Life for Jason Holland would be fair to a certain extent. But it wasn't a fair trial and it was a cruel and unusual punishment to turn them all in for life. They weren't gangbangers, they certainly weren't armed robbers, they were just stupid. Putting Brandon Hine and Tony Milotti in jail for life is not going to accomplish anything but revenge. Just give the kids a fair trial. Gut-wrenching movie.
SCORE: 97%