pensacolacomputer Very important subject...yet could have easily been a 30 minute documentary. It would go on and on about things that had NOTHING to do with the main subject. Someone please edit this, and it would easily get 10 stars from me, but instead it gets 5 stars for wasting over an hour of my time.

Tss5078 Ask yourself a question, what if a loved one was brutally killed, but you were the only one who cared about getting justice for the victim? That was the reality in the small town of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania in 2008, when a migrant worker was killed in a hate crime. Shenandoah is one of those small towns, where everyone knows everyone else, most people even work in the same place, but recently, things had been changing. Migrate workers had been brought in to keep the failing factories open, and the citizens of the flailing town were losing their jobs. One night some drunk teenagers were joking around, but to a recent arrival to this country, who didn't speak the language or know the culture, it looked like something else. As he confronted the teens, they proceeded to assault him, shouting racial slurs in one of the worst assaults the town had ever seen, and when the dust had settled, the worker was dead. After a brief investigation, the police linked the crime to several football players and charged them with minor crimes, but the town wasn't outraged, in fact, as this documentary explores, most of the townspeople actually approve of what the police did! This documentary is utterly shocking, taking us through the crime and investigation, while giving us a look at both sides from the towns reaction to the man's fiancée and the very few outsiders who actually faced threats and harassment, simply for asking that justice be served. Does this kind of thing really still happen in the United States? According to this documentary, the small town racist, gang, mentality is still alive and well, and it's closer than you think. Fighting it isn't as simple as going online and telling people about it either. The documentary was truly shocking, not just because of the ages of the boys involved, but for the sheer fact that these people thought they were justified in what they had done, and by how the react to anyone who tries to tell them differently.

tieman64 A documentary by David Turnley, "Shenandoah" observes as a gang of Pennsylvanian youths, all members of a High School football team, assault and kill Luis Suarez, a Mexican teenager.Issues of race are immediately delved into. Shenandoah is a small town, closely knit, and low wages and hard times have left locals seething with anger. Immigrants, illegal or otherwise, are seen as a threat. More than a threat, immigrants are deemed "not human". "I didn't think of him as a person," one of the killers admits.Turnley then takes us to the football field. Here, young men are indoctrinated, hypermasculinized, dubious notions of manhood, power, aggression, gender, sexuality, race and nationhood instilled. To be a "man", one must win, one must dominate, one must crush. Crush what? Anything deemed feminine, deemed Other, deemed different, deemed weak. But whilst the mastering of violence as a necessary test of masculinity (and eventually patriotism) once led to young men being shipped abroad to kill the Other – foreigners deemed subhuman and soft – now the Other is in one's own backyard. The killing happens here, on home soil.Studies have shown that young men who are members of certain school sports teams are twice as likely to abuse their dating partners. The term "hyper-masculine identity disorder" is itself increasingly entering gender identity disorder indices. The purported symptoms of this "disorder" are an overly inflated sense of entitlement, a propensity for violent outbursts (physical, sexual or verbal), homophobia, bigotry, the belief that all things "feminine" are inferior, emotional detachedness, feelings of inadequacy, a disregard for others, hyper-nationalism, obsessions with physical strength and a propensity toward risky behaviour and/or extreme competitiveness.It's thus fitting that one of the film's subplots contrasts the testosterone of the football field with the more placid arenas of school theatre halls. Here, one of the killers sings, hops, skips and acts on stage. Before the murder, he'd probably have been mocked for indulging in such a hobby.As the perpetrators were local football stars, Luis Suarez's murder – more a symbolic gang rape – was quickly covered up by local police officers. They deliberately botched the investigation, but activists and several upstanding townsfolk ensured that the crime wasn't suppressed. Climaxing powerfully with Bruce Springsteen's "Lift Me Up", "Shenandoah" ends with some semblance of justice, and the hope that further progress will one day be made.8/10 – See the haunting documentary, "Murder on a Sunday Morning".

Tom Dooley This amazing and rewarding documentary is one that will not fail to move you. It tells the story of the brutal, racially motivated killing of Mexican Luis Suarez. The assailants were all members of the High Scholl football team and had been drinking. They chased him down and kicked him to death.In this small close knit town all the locals know each other and so the police colluded to ensure there was a cover up. What director David Turnley has done here is allow both sides to have their say – that is those that were willing to appear on camera. This is non judgmental and allows the viewer to make up their own minds. It is a very moving and gripping story and raises issues of racism, truth, honour and justice. I watch a few documentaries bit am no way near a fan, but if they were all of a calibre such as this then I would quite quickly become an addict – absolutely recommended.