The Central Park Five (2012)
Storyline
In 1989, five black and Latino teenagers from Harlem were arrested and later convicted of raping a white woman in New York City's Central Park. They spent between 6 and 13 years in prison before a serial rapist confessed that he alone had committed the crime, leading to their convictions being overturned. Set against a backdrop of a decaying city beset by violence and racial tension, this is the story of that horrific crime, the rush to judgment by the police, a media clamoring for sensational stories and an outraged public, and the five lives upended by this miscarriage of justice.
Directors
Writers
Cast
Donald Trump, Rudolph Giuliani, Al Sharpton, Ed Koch, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, Kharey Wise, Matias Reyes, Jim Dwyer, Angela Black, Craig Steven Wilder, LynNell Hancock, Calvin O. Butts III, Raymond Santana Sr., Michael Warren, Natalie Byfield, Saul Kassin, Michael Joseph, David Dinkins, Ronald Gold, Humberto Arroyo, Bobby Burns, Robert Colangelo, Mario Cuomo, Howard Diller, Linda Fairstein, Bernard Goetz, Carlos Gonzalez, John Gotti, John Hartigan, Elizabeth Lederer, Jack Maple, Bobby McCray, Linda McCray, Colin Moore, Robert Morgenthau, Paul L. Richardson, Peter Rivera, Aaron Rosenthal, Sharonne Salaam, Mike Sheehan, Ben Ward
Trailer
Reviews
91
With an editing approach that seamlessly blends past and present, Central Park Five contains a fluid, engaging storytelling that does away with the dry voiceover commentary and theatrical music choices that typically account for the narrative flow of most Burns films.
90
NPR
Its greatest advantage over the book is that this is a story well-documented in moving pictures. In addition to recent interviews with the five, the filmmakers deftly marshal news footage, clips from the supposed confessions, and trenchant analysis.
83
This patient, righteous documentary by Ken Burns, David McMahon, and Sarah Burns recounts the story of justice undone (a serial rapist confessed) with extensive interviews, a thorough use of archival footage, and a less-than felicitous use of ominous-rumble music that unnecessarily insists, Isn't this an outrage?
80
A meticulously reported chronicle of a case that shook New York in 1989 and remains a mark of shame on the city ten years after the convictions were vacated, the film incisively documents a travesty of justice that echoes the infamous Scottsboro Boys railroading of the 1930s.
80
Variety
Mixing a breathtaking array of archival materials with new talking-head interviews, the film analyzes the monumental miscarriage of justice repped by the 1989 Central Park Jogger case.
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