What makes it different from others?

Awesome Movie

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

This is probably the most powerful documentary that I have ever seen. It stands as a historical record that will probably only become more valuable with time so that historians in 2050 will understand the depth of the man-made aspect of the tragedy.I happen to really like Spike Lee, and regard him as one of America's top 5 Auteurs, though one who takes big risks and sometimes misses the mark. It seems that the depth of the reality of this tragedy overwhelmed his faults and brought out the best in him. There is a focus on first-hand interviews from a variety of perspectives and documented fact, with a minimum of speculation. There is no narration, and he never appears on screen. Rather, the narrative is made through interviews and clever editing. This technique is extremely engaging, and the viewer is encouraged to (re)form their own understanding.The reality that there were many missed opportunities to avoid the suffering is heart-wrenching and uncomfortable.

In some respects, New Orleans, a city built eight feet below sea level in the hear of hurricane country, is a natural disaster waiting to happen. But you might think, given its location in the richest country in the world, that there would at least be top-class flood defences, a solid evacuation plan and a firm commitment to rebuild. But in America, the politics of class and race are never far away, and New Orleans is poor and black. Director Spike Lee has done a real service for his country by making this film which exposes the shocking story of hurricane Katrina, a superficially simple assembly of documentary footage and the sometimes contradictory but always diverting testament of literally dozens of people, some famous but most not, caught up in the disaster. It's hard to pick out the most terrible revelations: but starving victims were prevented at gunpoint from entering neighbouring counties, and the school system has all but collapsed in the aftermath of the disaster because of the decline in the city's tax base: these are things that just shouldn't happen in a supposedly rich and civilised country, and are accidents (if that word is not too kindly) of man, not of nature. The truth is stark and powerful: Katrina did more damage than those planes on 9/11, but its attack was not aimed (especially) at the rich and powerful; the different responses serve a dreadful indictment of the state of the American dream.

In this very special documentary that Michael Moore would truly love, New Orleans was listening, but not listening enough. The big problem was when Hurricane Katrina was about to slam towards the New Orleans coast; at that point, most of New Orleans' residents thought that the hurricane would go east towards Texas and not hit Louisiana. They were wrong.As Katrina hit the Gulf Waters and strengthened after hammering the state of Florida as a Category 4 storm, the storm grew to the highest scale in the Saffir-Simpson scale---a Category 5. Seeing that hurricane on radar in the Gulf, even though I was no hurricane forecaster, I believe that winds had whipped up to 145 to 160 mph in the worst part of the storm. The air pressure in the hurricane reached about 900 millibars. That means that convective available potential energies in that storm could reach as high as 6,000 joules per kilogram and lifted indices as high as -11. You only get these readings in a very severe thunderstorm.In other words, Katrina was a monster storm that cannot be ignored.On August 28, 2005, hurricane watches were put out throughout the whole Gulf Coast. The mayor of New Orleans told all New Orleans people to evacuate, but some New Orleans residents could not get out. Then the city government made a plan to put all evacuees who could not get out of New Orleans before the hurricane to the Superdome in downtown New Orleans. I saw about 100,000-150,000 people herded in the Superdome like cattle.And even after the storm, things were not better. People were stranded for days. The Superdome got hotter and hotter and some people decided to get out of there. The New Orleans Convention Center did not fare any better. The government did not care for them, and that is why a fair amount of hurricane victims died in the streets and in the waters. And to top it all off, anarchy akin to what happened in south central Los Angeles during the riots of 1991 exploded like a nuclear bomb in New Orleans. Several looters were shot; police kept the destitute and dislocated away from higher ground; and even police who had powers to arrest were unable to do it. One testimony of a Black looter who got shot twice by someone firing a shotgun and ending up with buckshot wounds all over made me so scared, because you only see such stuff in westerns.For some people, the breach of the levee in 2007 that triggered most of the New Orleans flooding, especially those who were at the Gentilly area of New Orleans, caused enormous fears. Some people near the breach of the levee heard explosions, and this was akin to the dynamite detonations of the levee during the last hurricane in New Orleans in about 1962.

This documentary is intensely powerful, all 4 parts of it - easily over 4 or 5 hours in total (I watched it all from beginning to end in one sitting and lost track of time). The purity of the depiction is very refreshing, free of the overbearingly pompous moral platitudes of someone like Michael Moore. No voice-over, just the just the voices of people involved in the disaster. Yes, it is clear what side the filmmaker is on. However, the way the film is produced is balanced, thought-provoking and insightful in such a way that one simply cannot argue with what it is saying. It is incredibly poignant, but there is no sentimentality here - there 's simply no need for it, because the tragedy is so stark and numbing in its extremity. The scale of the tragedy is too huge for any lens to capture, but this is probably the closest most outsiders could ever get to feeling the pain of the New Orleans people. It is clear this was an unprecedented event, and it really does require the depth and scope that a 4 or 5 hour examination makes possible. It is always compulsive viewing, and while the subject matter is impossibly dark, it does show some wonderful flashes of human strength and positivity that provide some hope. In short, it is a masterpiece of documentary film-making, and a very courageous project.** spoilers and discussion below **The first 2 parts cover the buildup to and immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It is harrowing and painful. It is incredible to see 'third-world' scenes of utter devastation and people so viciously stripped of their humanity and dignity on American soil. You will see dead bodies hideously swollen and decomposed, shell-shocked children whose last memory of their home is watching their parents die. Words honestly fail me when trying to convey the horrors depicted here. It is not easy viewing, but in a way it is our duty to watch it.Nothing can prepare you for acts 3 and 4 that cover the longer-term aftermath. This is a mind-boggling story of an entire people, community and culture sold out and literally left to rot. Families are separated and dispersed around the country, left to fend for themselves. Work on clearing up the city doesn't even start for 6+ months after the event. On top of everything else, property developers are trying to steal citizens' bare land with the government's help (it's very profitable you see). It is a shameful indictment of the corrupt and subhuman way that the US is run. To any sane person watching, there is absolutely no doubt that the government of the US does not care about its people. For this reason alone this is probably the most important film that Spike Lee will ever make.I am saddened by the criticism of this film in some of the reviews here. The film is clearly not only about black people, even though when a city has such a large black majority it is inevitable that race will become an issue. Wake up America, the only place in the world with such segregated communities was South Africa during apartheid. There are a lot of clearly shocked white people here, quite obviously feeling absolutely betrayed by the government and system they formerly believed in. It seems almost like the negative reviewers are hired ghouls of the government out to discredit this film and its maker. The more cynical would say "well, what right do these people have to receive anything for free?" - I would implore these people to watch act 4. Lawful citizens who have paid years of tax and insurance, building a livelihood out of nothing with their bare hands, are told they will get nothing - theft and fraud on a grand scale. How does this fit into the American dream? How do you know that it won't happen to you tomorrow?The most incredible thing you realise after watching this film is that somewhere along the line, life and humanity became expendable and cheaper than the paper we worship. The only thing that means anything anymore is money and power, and the only way to grow is to acquire more of it. This documentary shows how empty and destructive this philosophy actually is. I'm happy that Spike Lee still has the balls to make films like this.The other thing you're left wondering at the end is: what more does it actually take for people to wake up and realise what is happening? What is this 'freedom' that is being sold to the world with a gun to its head?By the way if you think I'm a typical internet anarcho-commie rebel, you could not be further from the truth. I work, pay taxes, bills, all the rest of it, just like any honest citizen. Read my other reviews, I'm not some kind of reactionary Infowars sheep. However I refuse to bury my head in the sand, and after watching this film you will also find it hard to do so. The truth is here, more vivid, brutal and real than CNN could ever be. You owe it to yourself to watch it.