13th (2016)

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

13th is a great documentary about the history of race relations in the U.S. and the development of the atrocity that is the prison industrial complex. The only problem I have with it, is that it should have been a docuseries instead of a film. It's too short to properly delve into the subject matter. Race relations, the war on drugs, the war on crime, privatization of prisons, mass incarceration-these topics are too great and the history is too rich to adequately and thoroughly describe in just two hours.

The aim of the documentary is to show how the over-represented black prison population is all the state/corporations/white people's fault essentially, providing very little of the documentary's time to counter-opinion.Arguably, the most reasoned argument in the entire documentary was a 10 second clip of Bill Clinton, completely destroying the argument that crack cocaine was banned and severely punished as an anti-black measure when, given the vast magnitude of harm the drug did to urban and black communities, the prohibition of it guarded those same communities unlike the weaker protections offered to the mainly suburban white communities from the harms of normal cocaine, where punishment of possession/distribution was, the documentary claims (without statistics), less harsh. By that reasoning, the war on drugs was anti-white. I don't agree with either reasoning because I don't agree that the war on drugs was motivated by race nor do I agree with the central argument of the documentary that the incarceration rates of African-Americans are so high because of a white conspiracy. Poor documentary. 4/10.

I am white, but not from the U.S. and years goes by, my hate I would describe it, to those whites or other racists gets stronger and stronger. I feel like those people are the real vampires that kill or see black people as their dinner blood. Back in my country we have black people but, there is no such a thing as racist or seeing them different than ourselves. Nobody would understand if you say they are black, should be treated different, NOBODY! And then America talks about human rights in the other countries, if you really care first fix it in your country. I have friends here black, white, Latinos and more, and I see no color. THOSE racist people should be evils that live with us. "Hell is empty, all devils are here", William Shakespeare, must meant those white, cruel racists. I watch lots of movies, especially these kind, and every time I see movies like that I wish I were a superhero or someone who could do whatever he or she wishes, and feel what people are thinking and kill those racists. I am white, but not from the U.S. and I am 100 % with "BlackLivesMatter". I am white, and I care about black People!

This could have been a great movie, it's so sad that they want to change the people's perception of black people by lying and what's worse is that they use this movie as a way to spread out political propaganda. In my opinion this is not helping the black community, it actually makes things worse. Black people don't need pity, they need equal rights, equal treatment and to be seen as equal people and members of the community. We've had and have so many black icons and role models, yet this movie portraits the black people as victims. The treatment they have to suffer because of racial profiling is 100% true, and this needs to be changed first... but this approach is wrong. Prove the narrow minded that black people are not subhumans, tell the world how they enriched our way of life and culture, educate the black people's way of thinking and attitude. By spreading subtle hate messages towards a presidential candidate you fuel this ongoing media war and diversion between people living under the same "roof". A few ingredients have been added to this movie: dramatization, dramatization and more dramatization, altered facts and political propaganda, meaning that this is another tool for a certain political candidate to secure his position in the presidential campaign, making a fool out of the viewers, the true victims of the black communities, just to gain political support. If you want to help, do it for real, that's what the people need, genuine and efficient good intentions and actions.