#the seven five

[annoyingthemesong]

10 UNDERRATED DOCUMENTARIES

Say Amen Somebody

Streetwise

Tim’s Vermeer

Les Maitres Fous

The King of Kong

The Seven Five

Jesus Camp

Happy People: A Year in the Taiga

Tabloid

Level Five

[thefilmcuts]

The Seven Five (2014)

"Welcome to the land of fuck”

New York before the 90′s was something else. It was dirty and filthy everywhere. Over the years, politicians slowly but surely transformed the Big Apple into a tourist-safe destination. But in order to do so, some sweeping needed to be done. If crime and corruption disappeared from the naked eye, it’s because they pushed it somewhere else. The Seven Five is a documentary about some of the dirtiest cops in recent NYC history; cops from the 75th precinct.

Sometimes, documentaries just beg to get adapted into a feature film. With Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker) by the Rolling Stones blasting through the end credits and the New York City setting, The Seven Five feels like the best movie Martin Scorsese has yet to make.

When asked during his testimony if he was a cop or a drug trafficker, dirty police officer Mike Dowd answered: “Both”. As Tiller Russell exposes in his documentary, the 75th was such a crime-heavy precinct, that it was easy to blur the lines and get away with it. Even if he lets him brag a little bit about his crimes, Russell is very careful in the way he depicts Dowd. However, he ends up looking like a legendary crime figure, like a cop version of Henry Hill (Goodfellas). 

Making a brilliant use of old black and white pictures and archival footage, the city of New York itself becomes a character in this documentary. It helps to explain how Mike Dowd and his partners were thinking, how they justified their actions. From their point of view, they were stealing criminals, not real people.

You might have seen this story told countless times, but rarely did we truly explore the logic behind police corruption. If anything, this documentary exposes the reality that sometimes the “culture” of an environnement can shape you into a corrupted individual. Sadly, even if the streets of New York are cleaner than ever, the problem still remains.

[haverwood]

The Seven Five Tiller Russell USA, 2014 ★★★

[weaktonosignal-blog]

OPERATION ODESSA

If you’ve read the synopsis for Showtime’s latest documentary then you’ll have probably noticed that it reads a lot like a surrealist joke: - a Russian mobster, a Miami playboy and a Cuban drug dealer walk into a bar... What ensues isn’t a joke though, it’s the story of an oddball trio of charismatic villainous men who try to hustle the Russian mob, the Cali cartel and the DEA for a score of a lifetime by selling a Soviet submarine to a Colombian drug cartel for $35 million. It isn’t a joke, but by god, it is utterly bonkers.  

Operation Odessa gets its title from the actual name of the DEA investigation at the time and is the latest offering from director Tiller Russell - the man who gave us the rather trite Mathew Broderick flick, Dirty Weekend, back in 2015, but then redeemed himself by delivering an expose of NYC’s filthiest cops in the ultra-brilliant documentary, The Seven Five. 

Again Tiller shows that he is a major player when it comes to modern documentary making. Operation Odessa is slick in visuals that evoke the Miami-Vice era in question and his knack for setting a pace ensures that the excitement level is cranked all the way up to balls-to-the-wall. His greatest talent though is his brilliant ability to match the thematic tone to his subject. We saw this with the subdued touch present in The Seven Five, but deciding to apply a comedic touch to this already ludicrous tale shows he is a man who clearly knows how to translate an onscreen story to an audience. 

It’s for you if you like: comedy, mob and cartel stories, 1980′s excess, or have a massive thing for Russian submarines.

Operation Odessa is currently available to watch on Netflix. Trailer below.

[dylstrome-19]

ok the seven five is fucking UNREAL

[barejunk]

The Seven Five on Netflix

[lonedidion]

[godardfanforever]

The Seven Five aka Precinct Seven Five (2015)  dir: Tiller Russell

When I heard about this documentary not too long ago it immediately jumped to the top of my must-see list. Hearing about it brought back memories of reading newspaper updates on the Mollen commission and the exploits of one Mike Dowd. I was riveted. Growing up a black male in Detroit has made police corruption a constant interest and part of the dark fabric of the city in which I was raised. 

When I spent time in New York it was not long after the Mollen commission work. I often thought about those corrupt times and any corruption taking place then since Brooklyn, East New York was an area I often passed through.

The documentary is not as engrossing nor as informative as I hoped. The film feels a bit singularly focused and lacks some of the depth of information on those times I was looking for. In fairness, the title does state the film will focus mostly on this one precinct’s abuses and criminal activity corruption. Which makes one wonder the systematic scope of corruption and ethical psychosis city-wide since these abuses were no doubt taking place in other city police precincts. Still a must-see for those familiar with those times or interested in police corruption discourse.