Giuliani Time: Who is the real Rudy?

Reviewer: Erin Donovan
Rating (out of 5): ***

In a recent op-ed piece Cintra Wilson wrote of Republican 2008 Presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani (seen at right in drag, with Donald Trump, in still from the film):

On 9/11, all Americans were frightened children, and in a moment of mythic personal heroism, Mayor Giuliani filled the gaping leadership void. The president looked like a petrified chimp; Cheney was spirited to an underground bunker. Only Giuliani could pull himself together sufficiently to get on TV in the midst of the wreckage and show America that a grown-up was still breathing. On that terrible day our reptile brains looked at Rudy Giuliani and said, "We're OK now. Daddy's home."

And we forgot, some for a moment, some permanently, that Daddy was psycho.

Giuliani Time focuses on his more "psycho" period in politics, specifically his eight year tenure as mayor of New York City (with a quick overview of his role in Reagan's Department of Justice). The film delves (and at a hefty 2 hour running time that delve is deep) into the civil rights violations and general absurdities wrought by his neo-conservative policies, egotism and political ambitions.

While the film clearly has a critical bias, director Kevin Keating exercises much discretion* in laying out a nuanced counterpoint to the popular portrait of "America's mayor." In fact, there's a good 40 minutes of the second act which can best be described as econ porn, that creates a human illustration of why Workfare was a social and economic disaster for the city. But where Giuliani Time gets the most meaty is its incendiary account of how Giuliani's aggressive crime prevention tactics (apparently coupled with little transparency or accountibility) inevitably led to anyone who was not a white millionaire winding up ticketed, jailed, institutionalized, murdered or publicly humiliated.

The story is told mostly with scrolling headlines, archive footage and interviews with former staffers, local journalists, residents of New York City and a handful of area celebrities (Al Sharpton, Ed Koch, Ralph Nader and Donald Trump). But there is something ultimately a little unsatifying about a documentary dedicated to itemizing Giuliani's prejudices, failures and foibles but making little attempt to examine the inner life of a man who went from being a crusader against white-collar crime to Donald Trump's #1 himbo, and who publicly mocked the family members of an unarmed man who was shot 41 times by the NYPD.

The DVD extras are pretty meager; a lonely web link to the official site sums it up.

See also: The Party's Over, Bush's Brain, General Idi Amin Dada, Thin Blue Line, This is What Democracy Looks Like, V For Vendetta, Rudy: The Rudy Giuliani Story (mediocre made-for-TV movie).

* However, I am not a journalist and therefore am free to mock his ferret-phobia, cousin-bride, and the omission of any mention of his children from his presidential campaign materials after an acrimonious divorce from their mother.