Pluskylang Great Film overall

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Philippa All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

tdrish The Killing Of America documents real life footage of the random acts of violence that wreak havoc upon the country. There are no actors here. It's all real. The first 30 minutes of the movie examines the assassinations of some major icons, such as JFK and Martin Luther King. The middle of the film will focus more on random acts of local violence, such as school shootings and snipers. The last half of the film will focus on serial killers, such as Ted Bundy. Put them altogether, and you have one of the most disturbing classic documentaries of all time. Be warned, everything you see in the film is real, and and in extremely graphic detail. ( It cannot be denied the worst scene is seeing John F. Kennedys head ripped open by bullets. Again, this is REAL footage!) Myself, I do not enjoy seeing anybody getting hurt, much less watching children getting slain and families mourning over the deaths of many loved ones. However, this documentary is simply showing us history, up until the time of its release (1981) in the making. Fast forward to 2018, and its still very disturbing, especially when we see that things have not progressed much toward peace. I did not like the fact that most of the first half of the movie focused more on the problem with guns, and gun control. Guns are not the problem, its the person operating the gun that's the problem. We choose to hurt people. We choose to murder people. Why do so many people choose to do so? It's one of the unanswered questions to the documentary. Why are we so angry? What fuels a person with so much hate, that they perform these terrorist acts of violence? We may never know what powers such crimes, all we can do is be aware of our surroundings at all times, and NEVER take anything for granted. ( At the time of this review, Chicago has a growing number of crime and homicides, dominating record high numbers, putting Chicago at more murders a day then Los Angeles and New York combined! We are not evolving, we are dissolving here.) It's up to you weather you want to watch this or not, for sensitive viewers, it may give you nightmares. For those who wish to proceed, just understand one thing, and I will leave you with this: This is all uncensored history. You don't have to like it. You don't have to love it. You don't have to hate it, either. Just embrace it. Embrace the fact that this all happened. We don't know why. All we can do is embrace ourselves, and each other.

Sam W. This is most definitely one of the great obscure documentary films, one of the most chilling and engrossing I've ever seen. It's tremendous that YouTube and other corners of the internet have brought it to so many more people than were able to see it in the 1980's. It not only spotlights the well-known killers/maniacs of the 60's through the early 80's, like Charlie Manson, Ted Bundy, Jim Jones and John Gacy, but also gives time to things like James Hoskins' 1980 hostage-taking at the Cleveland TV station, Anthony Kiritsis' bizarre hostage-taking of Richard Hall in 1977, and other things which aren't widely remembered today.The whole concept of the film, which holds that violence in America had increased largely since the assassination of John F. Kennedy, is compelling, if maybe a bit inaccurate. It refers to the 1950's as having been a more innocent time, of "big cars, big everything", but also accurately acknowledges that "not everyone could get a share of the dream" (i.e. African-Americans). The only drawback to this view is that the 50's weren't anywhere near as "wholesome" or "innocent" as many people have been led to believe. It was a time of ugly, repressive social structures and ugly Cold-War politics, with a complacent, prosperous appearance that was not entirely fictitious, but which masked a lot of nasty things going on beneath the surface. "The Killing of America" would have been and even better and more explosive film if they'd have spent a little bit more time on the inaccurate ideas that had already developed by then about the 1950's, an era which is still naively idealized by many Republicans who are hell-bent on holding back social progress for non-white people, LGBTQ folks, and women.All in all, I would love to see a modern-day follow-up, which would be made along the same lines as the original, and cover the many killers and violent phenomena of the past third of a century in America since the original "Killing of America" was made. "Night Stalker" Richard Ramirez; Jeff Dahmer; the seemingly sudden emergence in the late 90's of school-shooters like Klebold and Harris (being as the original mentions, among other young murderers, San Diego high-school-aged sniper Brenda Ann Spencer); the September 11 attacks, the resultant partially irrational hysteria over the "new terrorist threat" in America, and the Iraq War; and finally winding up with the mass shooting epidemic that has generated so much well-founded debate about gun control in the 2010's, not to mention the police killings of unarmed people of color that have garnered so much attention recently.It'd be awesome to hear the original English narrator return for this hypothetical sequel, although I have a strong suspicion that he's now dead. In my view, aided by the constant hectoring of ultraconservative hawks and the new, radical right-wing National Rifle Association, the problem of out-of-control gun violence in particular hasn't gotten THAT much better since the early 80's. The whole tone of the original "Killing of America" was that society was declining then due to all this violence, which was driven home by the English-language narrator's somber, sinister voice. I can only imagine how much darker all of the comparatively recent violent events I mentioned above would seem if they were recounted by that same deep, ominous voice-over.

Lechuguilla Violence is the theme of "The Killing Of America", a visually graphic compendium of murder in the U.S.A. "Guns and more guns" intones the narrator, as shots are fired, victims fall, chaos ensues, and the killer's face appears on screen ... over and over and over, one crime after another. Watching this film you'd think that there's a killer hiding behind every bush.Beginning with the JFK assassination and progressing to the early eighties, the film compresses some twenty years of violence into ninety minutes, giving a somewhat distorted cultural impression. How does the murder rate during those twenty years compare to prior decades? The film doesn't tell us. How does that period compare to more recent times? The film can't tell us. So that one problem with "The Killing Of America" is that it is time-bound, stuck in a particular era, without reference to the past or future.One might also ask ... how does American gun violence compare to other countries? The film compares the U.S. to Japan and England, which have ultra-low murder rates. Beyond that, the film doesn't say. Recent statistics show that in comparison to other industrialized nations, the U.S. has a higher murder rate than any country except Russia. But when compared to non-industrial countries, like Honduras, Venezuela, and the Ivory Coast, violence in America is quite low. So a second problem with the film's message is lack of adequate geographic perspective.There's also a problem with the film's structure. Although there's a general chronological progression of events, I cannot justify the film's sequential positioning of different types of gun violence, for example, a political assassination followed by some local neighborhood murder, followed by an expose on a highly publicized serial killer. Such sequencing is haphazard and arbitrary. Apart from the obvious violence, what is the unifying theme in this jumble of cases?The visuals in the copy I watched are poor with lots of out-of-focus scenes, though that can partly be explained by impromptu photography. Overall images trend a little too dark. Sound quality also is poor in spots. Most background music is a bit too frenzied and too loud. John Lennon's song "Imagine" provides a welcome reprieve at the end.There is no question that the level of violence in the U.S. was then, and still is, too high. "The Killing Of America" does indeed provide factual information, with very good video footage of local murders and highly publicized national cases. But the political bias toward gun control is blatant. And the overall production suffers from morbid exploitative visuals at the expense of calm, rational analysis.

punishmentpark Even though 'The Killing of America' wants to state a peaceful message, it has a dubious way of getting its point across, lacking logic and thoroughness. Of course, a lot of the statistics may be real, but more than anything else they show (partly) how a 'new' society, after two world wars, is beginning to face its limitations and problems concerning its enormous growth, high speed development and radical cultural changes... and several serial killers portrayed here never even used a gun! But beyond that, restrictions on American gun laws would certainly have mý blessing...Back to 'T.K.o.A.', because beyond its failing as a documentary, it offers an intriguing series of archival footage pertaining to all kinds of 'modern' violence in America, from about the early sixties up to the early eighties. It starts right off the bat with the brutal street killing of a black suspect by some cops, and does not flinch at showing gore or seedy images that many will find offensive - some ninety minutes of assassinations, snipers, riots, war, mass-suicide and serial killers are then still to come...As a documentary: 3 out of 10. As a historic document: 9 out of 10. Which brings it to an average of 6 out of 10, since I find it hard to prioritize in this case...