Boobirt Stylish but barely mediocre overall

ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Leoni Haney Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

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.

Leofwine_draca The Killing of America is much more than just another shockumentary collection of real-life death footage, although that's exactly what it is. It's this film's narration that makes it an exemplary addition to the genre; it's nothing less than a treatise on gun crime in America, exploring the many different avenues down which it arises and looking at some truly shocking statistics.It's the ice-cold presentation of the facts and figures, and the real-life cases of snipers and serial killers, that make this a memorable film. Certainly there are some shocking still photographs and clips presented here, but a lot of the footage nowadays seems tame given what's readily available for viewing on Youtube and the like. However, the direction, editing, and music all make this a film which engages the brain as well as the senses.

daniel-mannouch Though crass in some parts, The Killing of America is an accomplished, paranoia inducing travelogue through the big dog's fraught relationship with violence, made even more shattering due to the fact that whilst there might not be mania inducing levels of lead in their atmosphere anymore (For Now), the underlying problems that triggered most of this chaos still plague America today.We go from Ghetto Shootouts to Political Assassinations to Serial Killers to one of the greatest twist endings, if you can call it that, in cinema, let alone exploitation, which like I said this Mondoco does go into. It's a disturbing catalogue of tragedy, idiocy and despair at the great social experiment blowing up in people's faces. A genuine sense of panic is felt whilst watching and as this is evidently a political film about bringing to attention a nation's state of emergency, well, Mission Accomplished.The Killing of America is, whilst not for repeat viewings, a must watch if you're even half interested in Mondo.

Woodyanders This documentary about the appalling mass epidemic of random and widespread gratuitous violence that initially started sweeping across America in the early 1960's might make for decidedly uncomfortable viewing, but it nonetheless does a frightfully persuasive job of illustrating that violence is a dangerous sickness with no immediate foreseeable end or cure in sight.Directors Sheldon Renan and Leonard Schrader pull no punches in their alarming catalogue of all kinds of grim and unpleasant atrocities: The assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and John Lennon, the heinous misdeeds of such notorious serial killers as Ted Bundy, David Berkowitz, John Wayne Gacy, the Hillside Strangler, and Dean Corll, the attempted assassinations of George Wallace and Ronald Reagan, the Charles Whitman shootings at the University of Texas in Austin, the tragic shooting of several student protesters at Kent State University, the horrifying schoolyard killings committed by Brenda Spencer, the equally upsetting Jonestown mass suicides, and other such in-your-face bleak occurrences are addressed in an unwaveringly stark and straightforward manner. Chuck Riley handles the narrator chores with appropriate solemnity. The flesh-crawling score by Mark Lindsay and W. Michael Lewis does the spine-tingling trick. The rough cinematography provides a suitably gritty look. Loaded with hideously explicit photos and newsreel footage, this notorious mondo shock doc packs a savage punch right to the gut.