i must have seen a different film!!

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

The Killing Of America documents real life footage of the random acts of violence that wreak havoc upon the country. There are no actors here. It's all real. The first 30 minutes of the movie examines the assassinations of some major icons, such as JFK and Martin Luther King. The middle of the film will focus more on random acts of local violence, such as school shootings and snipers. The last half of the film will focus on serial killers, such as Ted Bundy. Put them altogether, and you have one of the most disturbing classic documentaries of all time. Be warned, everything you see in the film is real, and and in extremely graphic detail. ( It cannot be denied the worst scene is seeing John F. Kennedys head ripped open by bullets. Again, this is REAL footage!) Myself, I do not enjoy seeing anybody getting hurt, much less watching children getting slain and families mourning over the deaths of many loved ones. However, this documentary is simply showing us history, up until the time of its release (1981) in the making. Fast forward to 2018, and its still very disturbing, especially when we see that things have not progressed much toward peace. I did not like the fact that most of the first half of the movie focused more on the problem with guns, and gun control. Guns are not the problem, its the person operating the gun that's the problem. We choose to hurt people. We choose to murder people. Why do so many people choose to do so? It's one of the unanswered questions to the documentary. Why are we so angry? What fuels a person with so much hate, that they perform these terrorist acts of violence? We may never know what powers such crimes, all we can do is be aware of our surroundings at all times, and NEVER take anything for granted. ( At the time of this review, Chicago has a growing number of crime and homicides, dominating record high numbers, putting Chicago at more murders a day then Los Angeles and New York combined! We are not evolving, we are dissolving here.) It's up to you weather you want to watch this or not, for sensitive viewers, it may give you nightmares. For those who wish to proceed, just understand one thing, and I will leave you with this: This is all uncensored history. You don't have to like it. You don't have to love it. You don't have to hate it, either. Just embrace it. Embrace the fact that this all happened. We don't know why. All we can do is embrace ourselves, and each other.

Violence is the theme of "The Killing Of America", a visually graphic compendium of murder in the U.S.A. "Guns and more guns" intones the narrator, as shots are fired, victims fall, chaos ensues, and the killer's face appears on screen ... over and over and over, one crime after another. Watching this film you'd think that there's a killer hiding behind every bush.Beginning with the JFK assassination and progressing to the early eighties, the film compresses some twenty years of violence into ninety minutes, giving a somewhat distorted cultural impression. How does the murder rate during those twenty years compare to prior decades? The film doesn't tell us. How does that period compare to more recent times? The film can't tell us. So that one problem with "The Killing Of America" is that it is time-bound, stuck in a particular era, without reference to the past or future.One might also ask ... how does American gun violence compare to other countries? The film compares the U.S. to Japan and England, which have ultra-low murder rates. Beyond that, the film doesn't say. Recent statistics show that in comparison to other industrialized nations, the U.S. has a higher murder rate than any country except Russia. But when compared to non-industrial countries, like Honduras, Venezuela, and the Ivory Coast, violence in America is quite low. So a second problem with the film's message is lack of adequate geographic perspective.There's also a problem with the film's structure. Although there's a general chronological progression of events, I cannot justify the film's sequential positioning of different types of gun violence, for example, a political assassination followed by some local neighborhood murder, followed by an expose on a highly publicized serial killer. Such sequencing is haphazard and arbitrary. Apart from the obvious violence, what is the unifying theme in this jumble of cases?The visuals in the copy I watched are poor with lots of out-of-focus scenes, though that can partly be explained by impromptu photography. Overall images trend a little too dark. Sound quality also is poor in spots. Most background music is a bit too frenzied and too loud. John Lennon's song "Imagine" provides a welcome reprieve at the end.There is no question that the level of violence in the U.S. was then, and still is, too high. "The Killing Of America" does indeed provide factual information, with very good video footage of local murders and highly publicized national cases. But the political bias toward gun control is blatant. And the overall production suffers from morbid exploitative visuals at the expense of calm, rational analysis.

This is one doco I wouldn't hurry to watch again. There were a few moments of this old, riveting, eye opening pic (that I viewed for the first time last week) that absolutely chilled me. Amongst some images of sick, abhorrent violence, we come face to face with those notorious few, who've earned their names in history, as the worst serial killers, and I need not spell em' out for you. Every frame of this pic is real, no dramatization or reenactment by capable actors, it's the real deal, a true shocking slice of America. It really goes into the Kennedy Assassination, which I liked, the two shooter theories, and CU shots of the actual point of impact. We even see Reagan get it, up close. Some of the interviews with those cold sadistic sons of bitches, is what's most affecting, the easily disturbed should steer clear of this one. We are totally repelled by these monsters. Bundy is what true nightmares are made of, I would of loved to be the one frying him. The final words from that Judge left a lasting memory. Starting with a police shootout, and ending with John's Lennon's vigil, TKOA is that truly one time shockomentary pic, where age in no way has dampened it's impact. Like a scar, it never gets smaller, or goes away. It's there for life. This is the lasting impact has. This well made doco, is not one I'd opt to watch again. It's too confronting and morbidly chilling. I'm better watching the new horror film, something this great, 'in your face, real life, can't get out of your head' pic is more than, and I give weight to the latter of that description.

I first saw this movie as a young teenager in about 1984. Back then I never really got the seriousness of what "Killing of America" was trying to do. In many cases I found myself watching it just to see scenes of violence like it was any random horror movie. Subsequent views have had a polarising effect considering how I once viewed the same footage.Killing of America, is a shockumentary, nothing more nothing less. It's role is not to delve into why the violence is happening or what is turning middle America against itself. I don't believe any movie or documentary can successfully do that, given that there are simply too many factors for why such violence exists.For the film to generate the shocks that it does, even where the extreme violence is 50 years ago, is powerful in itself.The reasons of why Charles Whitman decided to climb the university tower and just open fire on random strangers is never explored, but the fact that it happened, seemingly without any real provocation should be enough to make people stop and question.The reasons why Robert Smith entered a beauty college and callously slaughtered 5 people, one of them a 3 year old, are never revealed, only stating that he "wanted to get known". That is the real nature of this film. It's appeal is in its straightforwardness.The narration doesn't focus on gender or on race. There are crimes of white on black violence, just as much as black on white violence. However the undertone of how easily accessible guns are to people who obviously can't handle them and shouldn't be anywhere near them is evident throughout. The random almost inexplicable assassination of Martin Luther King who just wanted peace, to the equally bizarre assassination of Robert Kennedy by Sirhan Sirhan who claimed he didn't remember doing it.There's footage of a police officer explaining how a shotgun can easily be purchased in any store or supermarket and also footage of alleged gun reforms that just don't go far enough, so the Killing of America is predominantly about gun violence, but again it's role is not to explain why the violence exists, but the fact that it does exist and that it's almost becoming acceptable due to how commonplace it is.Yes there are a few anachronisms in the film, but these center around the use of numbers and statistics. It's unlikely that all this violence had a turning point in 1963, however one has to think that that date was chosen due to how traumatised America and most of the world was when Kennedy was assassinated, more so than ever before. Kennedy was not the first U.S president to be assassinated; Abraham Lincoln anyone?The 1960's was not the first decade of serial killings either, given that the Charles Starkweather case happened in the late 50's and Bonnie & Clyde were way back in the 30's, but the 60's seemed to be the decade where so much happened in a relatively short span of time, from race riots, excessive almost daily violence, and an ongoing war both political and actual.Overall this is a powerful film that achieves what it sets out to do. Much in the same way images of cancer are put on cigarette packs in some countries, this film is meant to be an in your face account of just how far and how fast society is sliding and continues to do so in the present day. It leaves out the psychological analysis of why and just presents the evidence as bleak as it is. If you can manage to locate a copy buy it and keep it.