Giuliani Time (2006)

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Blistering performances.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani became an international hero. But before his sudden deification, he was a much-maligned and often confrontational political figure who, by the end of his two terms, was despised by a majority of New Yorkers. "Giuliani Time" (2006), a new documentary from former cinematographer Kevin Keating, effectively details the numerous controversies that plagued America's Mayor throughout his tumultuous reign. Through interviews with both friends and foes – the latter seem to outweigh the former – Keating weaves a telling, though sometimes long-winded tale that paints Rudy as a controlling autocrat whose hell-bent quest for a more orderly city often trampled the rights of its citizens."Giuliani Time" starts with Rudy's rapid rise from working-class Brooklyn to becoming an ambitious U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York, where he made a name for himself going after mobsters and crooked politicians. Once Reagan was ushered into office, Giuliani become Associate Attorney General, the third-highest office inside the Justice Department. As a harbinger of things to come, he sought to deny the rights of Haitian immigrants fleeing from the political repression of Jean-Claude Duvalier. After meeting personally with Duvalier, Giuliani misleadingly testified that the alleged repression did not exist. Keating focuses on this as a seminal moment in Giuliani's career, one that foretells his crackdown on New Yorkers when he becomes mayor in 1994.Following a bitter rematch against former mayor David Dinkins, Giuliani barely nudged his way into office on a promise to fight crime by fixing broken windows, a zero tolerance policing policy that focuses on quelling public nuisances in order to prevent major crimes. Keating delves deeply into Giuliani's use of the broken windows theory to tighten his grip on the city, first by removing the homeless and the dreaded squeegee men from the streets, then by cutting welfare rolls while using the unemployed to sweep sidewalks and take out trash. He also details Giuliani's unleashing of the police to do whatever necessary to enforce the law, which ultimately led to numerous accusations of brutality, and two highly-publicized cases where one man was brutally sodomized with a plunger handle and another shot forty-one times while unarmed.Keating does a nice job going step-by-step through Giuliani's troubled tenure, thankfully keeping mentions of 9/11 only at the beginning and end. Clocking in at close to 120 minutes, "Giuliani Time" does get carried away from time to time, going off on excursions that occasionally stray too far from the subject, while the most interesting aspect of the Giuliani story – his public meltdown in 2000 while running for a U.S. Senate seat against Hillary Clinton – gets the short shrift. But in the end, what we get is a fascinating portrait of a man who overstepped his bounds in his quest for power and seemingly lost everything, only to be reborn in our nation's most tragic moment.By Shawn Dwyer a CinemActivist

Excellent if not all that flattering documentary of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani who on the eve of the Septemer 11, 2001 attacks was all but washed up as a force to reckon with in NY politics. It was then that overnight Rudy became the most recognized and talked about political figure not only in New York or the USA but in the world earning himself the title of Time Magazines Man, or Person, of the Year 2001.Rudy's life is shown in a number of stills and newsreels as well as interviews with his friends and enemies. We get to see how he grew up as a New York Yankee fan right in the heart of Brooklyn, just five blocks away from the Dodgers Ebbits Field, and how he had to fight almost ever day with fanatical Dodgers fans for openly rooting for the hated New York Bombers who, up until they finally were beaten by the lovable Brooklyn Bums in the 1955 World Series, were always beating the Brooklyn baseball team in the post season fall Championship Classics.It was in 1981 at the age of 36 when Rudy was appointed by the just elected President Ronald Reagan the head Federal Prosecutor of the Southern District of New York State that Rudy made a name for himself as a two fisted no BS lawman who feared no man or crime syndicated that he came in contact with. Growing up what can honestly be called "Mafia" himself with his old man Harry, who ran a Mafia front bar called "Vincent's" in Brooklyn, being a mob enforcer. Mobster Harry liked to crack heads, with a Louisville Slugger, of those who were late in their lone-shark payments as well as him having served time in Sing Sing for armed robbery. Yet his son Rudy was anything but kind to the organized crime mobsters that he prosecuted running them out of business and out of town and into Federal Prison. Rudy got the best results in putting the biggest dent into the up until them almost invincible Mafia since NY DA Thomas Dewy back in the 1930's & early 1940's.In 1989 Rudy and his many supporters felt that it was the right time for him to run for Mayor of the city of New York. In a hard fought campaign that year against David Dinkins he lost by a nose only to run against Dinkins four years later. It was four years later in 1993 that Rudy became the first Republican Mayor of NYC since John V.Lindsey was elected the Republican slandered barer, Lindsey was re-elected in 1969 but on the Liberal not Republican ticket, back in 1965 almost thirty years ago. As Mayor Rudys attempt to curb crime, and make a name for himself by doing it, it became an obsession with him to the point where he forced his police commissioner Bratton, who was the person who really did all the cleaning up of crime, to resign his post because he was getting all the credit for keeping the crime rate low in the city.Rudy also had the cops go after non-violent law breakers like squeegee men, all 74 of them, and panhandlers as well as breaking into peoples, most of them law abiding, homes. These extreme actions had the city faced with hundreds of law suites, most of which it lost, for excessive force and police brutality that it almost drove the "Big Apple" into bankruptcy. Rudys second term as Mayor resulted in two high profile police brutality cases, Abner Louima & Amadou Dialo, that rocked the city as well as the country. This caused people to look into Rudys fascistic use of the police in almost turning the City of New York into a police state.In 2000 with Rudy not being able to run for a third term as mayor, because of term limits, he and his advisers decided that Rudy run for the New York State Senate seat against the then First Lady Hillary Rodam Clinton. In May of that year with both him and Hillary in an almost dead heat in the race for the Senate Rudy was diagnosed with prostrate cancer, that is now in total remission, that forced him to drop out of the race.Things didn't get any better for Rudy over the next few months when it was revealed, by him no less, that he was leaving his devoted wife and mother of two children Donna Hanover Kofnovec for the former Judith Stish Nathan, not the woman who some people think is the heir to the world famous Colney Island Nathan hot-dog fortune, whom he met at a mayoral function the year before. The way Rudy treated his now estranged wife Donna was the last straw to the many people who supported him over the years. Rudy had her find out, by not having the guts to tell her face to face himself, that he was leaving her as a tearful and distraught Donna watch her heel of a husband "Rudy Kazoody" announce the breakup on TV. This despicable and heartless action on Rudys part just about spelled curtains for his already stalled political career. It's as if fate or providence has something big in store for Rudy when on that fateful morning of September 11, 2001 the worst terrorist assault on the United States happened and he, as the mayor of the city attacked, was right in the middle of it. Overnight Rudy became not only the man of the hour but, what looks like now in late March 2007, the man to get the Republican nomination as its candidate for President and very possibly, to the delight of those who support and utter shock of those who despise him, being elected the 44th President of the United States!

This is essentially a "Hit-Piece" on Giuliani from the Michael Moore school of documentary film-making. It is so virulent and one sided that the viewer can only be led to think that the creators of this movie hold a serious grudge against the former Mayor. At the end of the day, one need only look to see that he left New York a better city than the one he inherited from his predecessor. Granted, some hard choices were made and if you want to single those things out for examples of his failures then you must also admit to his victories otherwise your message will be obscured by its obvious bias. Merely assembling a collection of sound bites, news clips and assembling them creatively in the editing room does not fool anyone, only those moronic enough to take this drivel at face value. Rudy did a good job. Not a great job, as I'm sure even he will agree. It's suggested here that 9/11 and it's aftermath saved Giuliani - I disagree. He would have been counted among New York's finest Mayors even if 9/11 never happened. But how he reacted to that dreadful event showed the world what "Courage under fire" really means.

Giuliani Time is an interesting, if somewhat overlong, movie that exposes Rudolph Giuliani's record on a number of issues while he was Mayor of New York and before of course, he became the patriarchal saint leading New York out of September 11th. Narrated mostly by a newspaper editor who seems to have a BIG bone to pick with him, Giuliani Time focuses on his drive to clean up New York City, tone down crime, and other things, well, that you would expect a mayor to do. Somehow, and here's a surprise here, some corruption and social injustice happens! Ohhhh nasty stuff here! Really, imho, this film almost makes a mountain out of molehill, by exposing some dirt that hardly seems dirty. Yes, his father was a Mafioso type of person. Giuliani even admits that in the film! But if you're looking for stuff like he ate-his-first-born, (he didn't by the way) then you're bound to be disappointed. To be honest, I actually enjoyed this film, you could say, for all the wrong reasons. I looked into this film more as a glimpse into a city in transition over anything else. Although some people mourn the loss of the seedier underbelly of Times Square in New York (it's still there, just not in Times Square), I found it was needed for the changing times. This film shows what had to be done.