Review: ‘The Interrupters’

1. I am no expert on heroism, but I can't think of much more heroic than a person throwing themselves in the middle of a brewing conflict between two total strangers simply because they don't want the two strangers to hurt each other. I mean, think about that. What an unbelievable thing. When a man is shot in inner-city Chicago -- a town that has seen a terrifying rise in gang violence over the last decade -- and he finds out who did it, he prepares to strike back. But before he's even out of the hospital, there is a someone there to tell him that more violence is not the answer, to calm him down, to explain that pain just begets more pain. This is that person's job. This is extraordinary. I'm not even sure this is human. On a basic, fundamental level, when someone is smacked, it is almost instinctual to smack them back. It is a simple reaction that does no long-term good but is in our DNA, I think. After years and years of retaliatory murder, though, the group CeaseFire had had enough.

2. "The Interrupters" follows CeaseFire, an Chicago organization founded in 2000 by a epidemiologist named Gary Slutkin, who hypothesized that you could treat violent crime the same way you treat infectious diseases: By stopping the initial transmission of infection. It's less about root causes (or, in medical terms, immunization) and more about controlling spread (stopping violence before it catches on). So when one violent act occurs, rather than let the situation multiply, "interrupters" step into the situation and try to control that spread. This is a fascinating theory, and it's one that has had legitimate success, lowering attempted murders by 40 percent over the last three years (though obviously other factors enter into that as well). But "theory" is something for people who aren't actually involved to pontificate about. Making the streets safer requires actual humans to go out and do the work, to interject themselves into extremely dangerous situations, to get up and make this their life's focus every day. That's who we meet in "The Interrupters."

3. Of all the interrupters we're introduced to -- including one who has been shot; we're left wondering who, exactly, is paying his medical bills -- three immediately stand out. (To the filmmakers as well as the audience: Director Steve James, who has plumbed this material before in "Hoop Dreams," follows their stories and travels throughout.) The first is Eddie, a Latino man from a good family who nevertheless found himself wrapped up in violence as a teen, ultimately spending several years in jail after murdering a man. Also, Cobe, another former gangbanger who realized, when he left prison, that he didn't want to abandon his son and went straight. The last, and most memorable, is Ameena, who not only was raised in gang culture, but in fact was born at its very center: Her father is Jeff Fort, founder of the Black P. Stones gang and, today, a convicted terrorist. Ameena went through her dark phase but came out a revolutionary of a different sort, a mother not only to two children but, essentially, the entire Chicago projects. She is smart, tough, compassionate and completely fearless: In one riveting scene, at the funeral of a teenage gang member, she asks the young people to stand up and collectively shames all of them. The mother of the boy weeps ... and nods in approval. We meet a lot of people in "The Interrupters," but it's Ameena who stays with you.

4. Even with all the good work they do, the interrupters know there are limits to their abilities, and it's worth noting that the vast majority of them moved out of the inner city years ago. (Tio Hardiman, the head of CeaseFire, lives in the West Suburbs, and Cobe knew to get to Yorkville, 50 miles from the city, while he could.) It's also worth noting that their arguments are not always convincing; they certainly know it too. In another of the film's most striking scenes, Cobe comes upon a man named Flamo, who just discovered that an opposing gang member, to extract revenge for a long-forgotten slight, called the police to arrest several members of Flamo's family, including his infirm mothers. (The charges are vague but appear to involved contraband weaponry.) Flamo is furious and desperate for vengeance when Cobe shows up at his door. Flamo screams at him, saying that he understands that Kobe has a job to do, but seriously, you want to talk to me about stopping the cycle of violence now, this very second? Cobe tries to talk to him about sociology and generational inertia, but stops himself halfway through: Sometimes words really do feel hollow. "This is as tough a case as I've gotten," he tells us. And yet, and yet: Somehow he gets Flamo to go to a CeaseFire meeting with him, and the next time we see Flamo ... well, I wouldn't want to give away one of the film's most pleasant surprises.

5. "The Interrupters" doesn't quite have the power of "Hoop Dreams," if just because of its episodic nature: Our interrupters meet new people every day, and it's difficult to focus in on any specific character. ("Hoop Dreams" had you so involved in the families' lives that you felt separation anxiety when the film ended.) I wonder if "The Interrupters" might even work a little better as an ongoing television program, with a different story each week, sometimes ending in success, sometimes not. But at the center of it all are those three interrupters, who plug out there, trying to help their communities, trying to make the world a little bit safer, in the face of unspeakable danger and consistent skepticism. (Even the Chicago cops don't always get along with the interrupters; they often think they're just getting in the way of their investigations. "We're not in the good and bad game," Hardiman says. "We're just trying to help people.") For about $1,000 every two weeks, these people try to make a concrete, palpable change in a community that fights them at every turn. What's amazing is not whether or not they're effective; what's amazing is that they even try at all. And that what they're doing works ... well, it's really just miraculous.

Grade: A-