Street Fight

For me the Independent Film Festival of Boston started with a film I heard a lot about, Street Fight. By the time I arrived, the small room at the Somerville Theater where it was playing was nearly full. So, I wound up sitting in the front row for a movie for the first time since an opening weekend midnight showing of Return of the Jedi back in 1983. From there, the screen was big, no one was in front of me, and I could stretch out my legs. I don’t know why I don’t sit in the front row more often.
Street Fight lived up to its excellent reputation. It was funny, sad and thought provoking. My one issue with the film is that there are a couple scenes where filmmaker Marshall Curry filmed subjects surreptitiously. While people do talk more openly and honestly when they do not know that their words are being recorded, I personally could never do that and even felt a bit uncomfortable watching those scenes.
That said, the one big impression that the film left me with was how people will vote for someone because of the feeling that he is “one of us.” What a person does in office seems almost irrelevant. What does matter is that voters feel a candidate is “their guy.”