Waste of time

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

I really wanted to like this movie and I like Cle Bone Stone a lot. But the movie tended to present something as fact, then drop it, and move on to something else. I'm not naive to gangs: I work with gangs: the bloods, the crips, and a local NYC gang "LB". I really liked Cle and I'm hoping that one day he'll be courageous enough to do an autobiography of himself. That would, no doubt, be an outstanding movie and an Oscar winner. Bastards of the Party is a fine movie.. It's just that I thought it could have been an exceptional movie.However, I applaud Cle Bone Stone for his work on this excellent documentary.

As a young man who was born and raised in Los Angeles - "bourgie" but close enough to gang culture to understand the nuances of daily life for gangbangers - I can say with confidence that this was an incredible look into a culture that many people know of but don't really know much about.Gang culture is the result of early, quite innocent militarism for the purposes of self-defense allowed to go completely astray. This film gives an inside look into the history and development of the violence gang culture of Los Angeles, a Roman-style tangle of syndicalism and family ties, full of the good-ole Southern ignorance, self-righteousness and hypocrisy.Some commenters considered the left-wing editorialising that goes on throughout the film to weaken it's credentials as an authentic documentary, but I do not agree. The leftism of the historians used as sources of information in the film are coincidental to the informative value that those historians provide. It can be overlooked, and should be, as director Cle Sloan himself admits that he is not as smitten with the gang culture as he is expected to be.The film also places the seemingly unrelated Black Power Movement in the proper context and providing the inspirational link between this Movement and the gangbanging culture. It is fascinating to ponder, and provides a great lesson on human nature and human frailty, especially the frailty of young men who grow up in communities where the grown men of wisdom are systematically removed.Home video footage of gangster funerals, cruising, and sign language was riveting to watch.The overall product I think is satisfyingly dispassionate and non-judgemental until the very end, I think. Cle Sloan admits that gangs contribute to the destruction of these communities and need to change. That is the true value of this fantastic film, I believe: it humanizes the gang culture and helps the viewer understand the psycho-spiritual conditions that lead to the kind of violence that the Bloods and Crips practice on a regular basis. Cle Sloan believes the gangs can be changed for good, and, as I tend to agree. The Bloods and Crips do not just consist of "niggas with attitudes" - they are lost men who need direction and self-respect.Highly recommended.

Bastards of the Party is a new documentary running on HBO that examines the rise of gangs in the Los Angeles area. It starts out a little slow and seems to be making excuses for the members - the same tired ones you have heard over and over - but it quickly turns into a fascinating historical piece.From the early days when Compton was an all-white area, through the civil rights movement and rise of the US Party and Black Panther Party - it is compelling stuff. The real eye-opening stuff involves the actual demise of the BPP and USP orchestrated by Hoover's FBI. The information about the FBI's CoIntelPro and their efforts to undermine these groups is now public record, what surprised me was the details about how the program started these groups fighting each other.The legacy of the FBI's destruction of the black cohesiveness still survives with the black-on-black crime that is still rampant between these gangs nearly 40 years later. The only downside of the film other than the apologetic start is the left-wing politico-speak that summarizes the film. It is a good history that does an excellent job of giving the facts, when it slips into this type of preaching, it loses a lot of credibility.The final point about gang names versus given names is especially poignant. Good stuff.

After viewing the movie, it took me back because I know quite a few of the people in the movie, as well the director. When I went to see the movie, I did not think that I would be receiving a history about gangs. The history is what made the movie quite interesting. When we went outside after viewing the movie, I told Bone, "The youngsters really need to see this movie so that they can see they are doing to their generation." As I am a "bastard" of a civil rights activist, she always says, "Your generation just kills and fights for no cause." Now, I can really understand what the meaning behind her phrase pertains to. The following day after I viewed the movie, I went home and told my mom about it and that she may be interested in the movie. At that particular time, she did not know anything about the movie, but after she went the African Market Place, she came home and new all about the movie as some of her old activist friends told her about it. Now, she is ready to see it, along with a group of her friends.I am very proud of Bone and his accomplishments. It takes a strong person to want to change themselves after believing certain things for so many years.