American Meth
Actor Val Kilmer narrates this powerful film exploring the methamphetamine epidemic that's ravaged blue-collar America. Putting a human face on the problem, filmmaker Justin Hunt reveals the damage being done by this rural drug of choice, as well as the steps being taken by communities across the nation to wipe out the scourge. From Wyoming to New Mexico, Montana and Oregon, American Meth paints a picture of both devastation and hope.
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- Cast:
- Val Kilmer
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Reviews
Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .
Captivating movie !
This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.
The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
This documentary is pretty bad . It does not appear to have a point other than to get a cop, a counselor, politicians some junkies on tape. The more f-ed up the junkies and the more abusive they are to the poor children they have the better . did anyone on the crew ever think of calling child services , or getting these people into rehab or something ? hell no , they were white trash gold ! i do see the merit of an attempt to show how this stuff affect families , but allowing these people to continue living like animals than people of the 21st century , all this while letting their naked children eat garbage and play outside in winter without shirts or pants, tends to turn this already shaky and irrelevant piece of documentary filmmaking into a sort of shock film that is useless to anyone except those who have a hard on for tragedy . i'm in no way saying that a filmmaker should narc on his subjects , but i do see the perversity of pointing out what is basically child abuse , while sitting in that house and drinking your latte. 2 out of 10 because it could have been much better but not much worse
What was billed as a chilling portrait into a lethal drug instead shows us a novice filmmaker who is addicted to cross dissolves. This movie is poorly conceived, poorly shot, and edited like a first year student project. The subject matter deserves much, much better. Pacing is dreadfully slow, editing is alternately clunky and sometimes nonexistent to the point that it feels like the movie forgets anyone is trying to watch it. Long, unedited interview clips try your patience as shot after shot just dissolve into the next. No artistry. No sense of storytelling. Some absolutely ridiculous ECU framing on interview subjects. Rookie mistakes, like poorly placed microphones picking up shirt noise and staging interviews next to what sound like busy highways. No connective logic between segments. The filmmaker also unnecessarily inserts himself into the project on numerous occasions, which only serves to provide the viewer with a face to blame.I'm an avid documentary watcher and believe that the meth epidemic in this country needs to be addressed. This is well intentioned but poorly executed, and I'm not sorry to say that I turned it off after 45 minutes.
I am not a big fan of traditional documentaries; they need something unique besides content to keep my interest. American Meth has little of that in it's rambling production from users to law enforcement officials to politicians to an intimate inside look at an American Meth family. But that that said, the locations are not what u expect - small town working class America where one would expect a rosy Palin story instead of one of ex-Christians hooked and trying to raise kids. The inside story of the trailer park family is touching, and seems real and telling of a society crumbling, without saying it's crumbling. But as mentioned in another review, the trailer park sequence is just too long...you forget the rest of the drama while stuck in the inside drama of trailer trash.
As a documentary, this has to be one of the poorer ones I've seen recently. The problem of meth is fascinating, and the ubiquity of it means there couldn't be any end to the interesting individuals, interviews, or footage that could be found on the subject...but this docco seems to have found very little.It's disorganized, inconsistent, poorly shot and poorly edited. The narration switches seemingly at random between Val Kilmer and printed screens (complete with typos). The background of the meth problem from treatment and law enforcement perspectives is jumbled and incomplete.(An entire section of the movie is devoted to listening to a couple on meth argue while their children run around their trailer - but the lack of editing means the reason for being there is quickly lost and we're left wondering why we set foot in their trailer park in the first place.)In the end there's no deeper understanding of the problem of meth, and you're left feeling like you've just watched a final project from Film 101.