No, "The Interrupters" is not a comedy about rude people at a cocktail party. Despite its unfortunate title, it's a sad documentary film about an attempt to reduce the number of young black men murdered by other young black men in Chicago. Directed, photographed and co-edited by Steve James, who directed "Hoop Dreams," about eager, young, Chicago-reared black boys playing basketball at Mineral Area College, it's gripping and ultimately saddening because for every young life saved, there probably are several dozen that are unchanged.
Unchanged probably means becoming a gang-member and killing members of other gangs, or being killed by one of them. Right and wrong seem to be non-factors in rivalries that turn deadly over an incautious phrase, an incorrect glance or any of a thousand words, looks and gestures that are taken as "dissing" someone else. The someone else may have a gun, or a knife, and death probably results.
The Interrupters were organized to interrupt confrontation and lower the tension before gun play began. They developed from the Chicago Project for Violence Prevention, formed by Dr. Gary Slutkin, an epidemiologist who saw violence in Chicago as a true epidemic.
James uses three men and a woman as his keys: Tip Hardiman runs "Cease Fire," an interrupter organization; Ricardo (Cobe) Williams and Eddie Bocanegra, ex-convicts who are working into new lives; and Ameena Matthews. She's the daughter of Jeff Fort, one of the first major Chicago gang leaders, but she changed after being shot. She doesn't hide it, however, still showing off an old photograph in a club wearing a fancy fur. Now married to an imam, and wearing a head-scarf, she has an intensity and a fervor that are equal to those being born again on the opposite side of the religious spectrum. Bocanegra teaches art to young children, Williams works with pre-school youngsters . Neither shows signs of returning to the gang culture.
But that culture is so ingrained in Chicago teens, it boggles the mind to think about how many other children in how many other cities are growing up to consider life of very little value in a confrontation with some semi-literate, heat-packing teen-age male. It's scary. Everyone talks. No one listens. False pride tramples on real pride. Real knowledge is overwhelmed by the word on the street, the rumor of the hour, the garbled phone message, the misspelled tweet.
Optimism doesn't live long in these neighborhoods
The Interrupters opens today at the Plaza Frontenac.
— Joe