clfrank2002 This movie was hands down, excellent. As a history buff, I thoroughly enjoyed learning the history of L.A. The first hand accounts along with the imagery was fantastic. I have read several reviews and noticed that people seem to think something was missing from the movie since it didn't go into as much depth in discussing the mechanics of the gang lifestyle. Well, I think they may have missed the point. As the title suggests, these gangs were MADE in America. And the movie goes to great lengths to illustrate this.Others were not satisfied because they weren't spoon fed the who, what, when and where of the origins of the gangs. This was done on purpose. If you paid attention to Kumasi, he told you everything you needed to know. When he said : "Part of the mechanics of oppression is to pervert people into becoming instruments of their own oppression." – this was the beginning of the Crips and Bloods. If you don't know anything about Hoover of COINTELPRO, then maybe you won't get it. You have to read between the lines.How do think they have such powerful guns, what about drugs? I'm no conspiracy theorist but the evidence is outstanding that the Crips and Bloods formed out of an attempt to eradicate a certain community.This movie should be shown in all schools and parents should show it to their children. Thank you Mr. Peralta and everyone involved in the making of this film.

bdgill12 "Made in America" centers around the inception and subsequent development of the Los Angeles gang culture. Director Stacy Peralta immersed himself in the gang neighborhoods of L.A. and spent months getting to know the members themselves before even turning the camera on his subjects. Peralta begins with interviewing the founders of both the Bloods and the Crips (the most notorious of American gangs) to provide a background for how the gangs came about. As the documentary progresses, Peralta and narrator Forrest Whitaker push further into the current gang scene and allow the viewer a glimpse into what it's like in the highly volatile and bloody war.I'm not completely sure when the war between the Bloods and the Crips took hold of America but pretty much everyone my age (27) was inundated with news on this phenomenon as children. Other gangs may have been just as prevalent in terms of membership and overall damage to society, but none of them had the impact of these two groups and that reach of influence spread across the country by the time I was in grade school. When I was in the third grade I knew more about the Bloods and the Crips than I did about the American system of government. We had school programs about the dangers not just of gangs but of the Bloods and the Crips specifically on what seemed like a weekly basis. By high school that influence seemed to have waned a bit but the lasting impression of the gang lifestyle was left in my psyche so you can imagine my interest in "Made in America." Unfortunately, "Made in America" is a flawed documentary. As opposed to "Bigger Stronger Faster" which gave time to both sides of the argument, "MIA" works entirely from the perspective of the gang members without any regard to what other opinions might be. That is to say, if you watch "MIA", prepare for a steady stream of blame directed at the White Man and the government. Right or wrong, the opinion of the founders of the Bloods and Crips would have you believe that the formation of their gangs was the result of extreme prejudice and the only solution they had at the time. The other side of that argument is never presented. In addition, we get no delving into the money side of the gang war, the drugs and guns, which would have been an extremely interesting segment.Still, "MIA" does provide a valuable insight that we rarely get and the fact that Peralta was able to get this amount of access is incredible. More often than not, real life looks at gang members feature covered faces and auto-tuned voices whereas "MIA" gets you up close and personal with the gang leaders. The increased level of violence and brutality that gangs have seen over the decades was of particular interest. When originally founded, the L.A. gangs served as a sort of social club for black youths who had nowhere else to turn. The fights between the gangs usually involved pugilism and rarely resulted in a serious injury or fatality. The introduction of guns into this battle, however, forever changed the face of the rivalry and pushed the gang war into the American consciousness. It is a sobering and cautionary piece of storytelling. Peralta puts the finishing touches on "MIA" by giving the mothers of gang violence victims some face time and allowing the impact of such a senseless and futile battle to sink in. "Made in America" is not a great documentary and could have given us more, but it is nonetheless, it illustrates a compelling and significant history.Check out my site: www.thesoapboxoffice.blogspot.com

Niklas Pivic A very strange documentary on how racism turned clubs into gangs, youths into warriors and a relatively small stretch of land into a war zone during the past 40 years. This film looks into the history of Los Angeles, how black youths were shunned by the government, harassed by the police and basically pushed to the brink of rioting, as in Watts and Detroit in the 60s. Then in the 90s when rioting hit Los Angeles again, clubs for youths of the 70s had turned into gangs, formed around the two biggest gangs of them all: bloods and crips, who have so far been the reason for the deaths of more than 15000 people. Highly recommendable, this film lets out the anger, despair, peer pressures, negative and positive thinking surrounding the entire nature of gangs forming. This is a very important, well-written and thoroughly researched and interviewed film.

Christian Strevy I recently saw this at Birmingham, Alabama's Sidewalk Film Festival. Stacey spoke afterward the screening about how the movie was shown many times to people in LA to make sure that he was getting the right angle. Also, that he spent months WITHOUT a camera getting to know the people that were featured in the film.Living in Birmingham, being one the nation's most dangerous and racially-divided cities, I can see how this film is relatable to all oppression-linked crime.I think that this issue is extremely too large for Stacey to have adjusted his focus any wider. To ask the director to squeeze more information into this documentary would be asking too much of him. I thought that it was, over-all, very interesting visually and in meaning which can be hard to come by in today's documentaries. I really hope HBO or some other distributer picks this doc up. It needs to be seen, not only by LA natives, but all of America.