Unlocking Mind-Set of ‘Criminals’

Veteran filmmaker Joseph Strick spent six months recording the operations of the decoy squads of police departments in New York, California and Minnesota, and then, whenever possible, interspersing this footage with interviews in which the prisoners tell what they did and why.

The result is “Criminals,” an absorbing 73-minute documentary that, thanks to Strick’s approach, gives fresh and disturbing impact to crime in America--a subject with which most of us are all too familiar.

All but two of Strick’s 20 interviewees are male, most of them young, African American or Latino, and the crimes for which they are convicted include rape, murder, armed robbery and drugs, often in combination. One of the 20, a young male hustler who killed an aggressive client quite possibly in self-defense, reminds us how most, if not all, of these people are dependent upon public defenders.

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“Criminals” confirms what most of us would expect of these convicts: a uniform lack of remorse, a total absence of interest in the fate of their victims, a thorough lack of the concept of right and wrong. They are as indifferent, often hostile, to society as surely in most instances society has been hostile and indifferent to them. (Only one individual, a young man, describing himself as a born-again Christian, expresses regret that he “stole another man’s property.”)

Most are clearly limited in education and all are ordinary-looking. One woman, convicted of killing her rival in love, actually asks the timeless question, “C’mon, do I look like a murderer?”

That we live in the age of video and surveillance cameras has yielded extraordinary sequences. On the lighter side we watch a convenience store clerk fearlessly scare off a man holding her up with a gun by speaking to him in tongues and we catch a church elder with his hand in the till.

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We also witness a drug dealer joyfully toting up piles of currency, wondering aloud whether to hand out the dollar bills to the poor. We also watch a gang ecstatically, savagely beat a man, recording the event to show to friends later.

There are an awful lot of angry men on view, rapists especially. Two retired police chiefs give their view of the most boastful rapist: Minneapolis’ Anthony Bouza says “to put him away for 30 years,” while Los Angeles’ Daryl F. Gates feels that the guy ought to be “the subject of a police shooting.”

That “Criminals” has the look of a video blown up to 35 millimeter only adds to its sense of raw immediacy, yet it is marred by a foolish soundtrack narration, quasi-poetic, preachy and often belaboring the obvious. (Who but the socially conscious would pay to see this film in the first place?)

The film’s powerful words and images speak for themselves, and Strick might better have used his soundtrack to fill us in on some vital statistics about these convicts: their upbringing, their level of education, etc.

Like “Scared Straight,” however, “Criminals” needs to be seen by young people.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: It includes depictions of actual crimes in progress, some of them violent, and has much blunt language with graphic descriptions of rape and murder; absolutely not for young children.

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‘Criminals’

Director Joseph Strick. Producers Elinor Bunin and Strick. Narration by C.K. Williams; spoken by Louise Smith. Camera work by Strick, Peter Skuts and the staffs of district attorneys in the Bronx, Manhattan, Minneapolis and Oakland. Editor Ruth Cullen. Running time: 1 hour, 13 minutes.

* Exclusively at the Town Center 4 for one week, 17200 Ventura Blvd., Encino, (818) 981-9811.