I saw a previous documentary about Attica that was pretty good; this one is far more brutal.

This film goes over the events as if it's a daily newsreel, with every detail about each day's events and the negotiations. I have to admit that part began to get a bit tedious. The footage from the police assault on the prison includes many photos of blood-drenched bodies and the various kinds of brutalization and torture that were inflicted on the inmates AFTER the authorities gained control of the prison. Throughout, the film intersperses interviews with former inmates, observers, children and widows of the guards, and one former National Guardsman.

It's a difficult but necessary film. I am puzzled by a couple of reviews on this site claiming it's "one-sided." I don't know what those people are talking about. The event was a mass murder by the government. The fact no one from the government was ever prosecuted is a stain on our country. Money from a lawsuit isn't enough.

Documentaries, like any form of journalism, can not be completely objective. But of any one of the forms of journalism, documentaries have the toughest challenge; for wherever the documentarian points his camera a subjective choice is being made. In fact, every one of the elements of filmmaking used express a subjective viewpoint no matter how devoted the intent to objectivity is.

Attica is one of the better journalistically sound docs I've seen in the last ten years. It's about the 1971 uprising at the Attica Prison in New York State that shined a spotlight on the brutal conditions inmates endured, but ultimately resulted in a massacre.

The recollections from former inmates, government officials, family members of guards, and journalists do most of the groundwork here. But, there's a massive amount of arrival footage including horrific images of the aftermath that leave indelible conclusions about what happened.

In the end, what happened is that there's a lot of blame to go around for what went wrong.

And, without directly commenting on it, documentarian Stanley Nelson Jr.'s film also points out that 50 years later much work at improving race relations needs to be done.

The last 25/30 minutes of this really elevates this doc to a different level, even if it's as painful as revolting.

Yes, I was mostly ignorant about this. I'm not American and I was only born almost 20 years after. This was shocking as hell, I knew there were some deaths, but never thought it was a cold bloody massacre. How come not a single one of those racist pigs were prosecuted for the killings?

I can't even analyse this as a film. Yeah, the sound is good, the editing too and the testimonies are great to hear. But this is such an emotional journey that I think that it is what it will stay with me, more than any technical achievements.