Don't listen to the negative reviews

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

This is probably the most powerful documentary that I have ever seen. It stands as a historical record that will probably only become more valuable with time so that historians in 2050 will understand the depth of the man-made aspect of the tragedy.I happen to really like Spike Lee, and regard him as one of America's top 5 Auteurs, though one who takes big risks and sometimes misses the mark. It seems that the depth of the reality of this tragedy overwhelmed his faults and brought out the best in him. There is a focus on first-hand interviews from a variety of perspectives and documented fact, with a minimum of speculation. There is no narration, and he never appears on screen. Rather, the narrative is made through interviews and clever editing. This technique is extremely engaging, and the viewer is encouraged to (re)form their own understanding.The reality that there were many missed opportunities to avoid the suffering is heart-wrenching and uncomfortable.

In this very special documentary that Michael Moore would truly love, New Orleans was listening, but not listening enough. The big problem was when Hurricane Katrina was about to slam towards the New Orleans coast; at that point, most of New Orleans' residents thought that the hurricane would go east towards Texas and not hit Louisiana. They were wrong.As Katrina hit the Gulf Waters and strengthened after hammering the state of Florida as a Category 4 storm, the storm grew to the highest scale in the Saffir-Simpson scale---a Category 5. Seeing that hurricane on radar in the Gulf, even though I was no hurricane forecaster, I believe that winds had whipped up to 145 to 160 mph in the worst part of the storm. The air pressure in the hurricane reached about 900 millibars. That means that convective available potential energies in that storm could reach as high as 6,000 joules per kilogram and lifted indices as high as -11. You only get these readings in a very severe thunderstorm.In other words, Katrina was a monster storm that cannot be ignored.On August 28, 2005, hurricane watches were put out throughout the whole Gulf Coast. The mayor of New Orleans told all New Orleans people to evacuate, but some New Orleans residents could not get out. Then the city government made a plan to put all evacuees who could not get out of New Orleans before the hurricane to the Superdome in downtown New Orleans. I saw about 100,000-150,000 people herded in the Superdome like cattle.And even after the storm, things were not better. People were stranded for days. The Superdome got hotter and hotter and some people decided to get out of there. The New Orleans Convention Center did not fare any better. The government did not care for them, and that is why a fair amount of hurricane victims died in the streets and in the waters. And to top it all off, anarchy akin to what happened in south central Los Angeles during the riots of 1991 exploded like a nuclear bomb in New Orleans. Several looters were shot; police kept the destitute and dislocated away from higher ground; and even police who had powers to arrest were unable to do it. One testimony of a Black looter who got shot twice by someone firing a shotgun and ending up with buckshot wounds all over made me so scared, because you only see such stuff in westerns.For some people, the breach of the levee in 2007 that triggered most of the New Orleans flooding, especially those who were at the Gentilly area of New Orleans, caused enormous fears. Some people near the breach of the levee heard explosions, and this was akin to the dynamite detonations of the levee during the last hurricane in New Orleans in about 1962.

A year's protracted, drip-fed pageant of disaster and failure condensed into four hours. Lee has the good sense never to use voice-over but to let the characters speak for themselves. There's also very little ingenuous editing: footage of Bush' risible praise of his FEMA director or Kanye West's wandering off-script are the only points repeated for impact. Or perhaps for credibility.If there is a sense of narration, the principal speaker is the truly exceptional Mrs. Phyllis Montana LaBlanc. No more than a resident talking head, she's lucid, passionate, modest and good humoured. Were that the indicted federal government were that straight-talking and entertaining.The impression that one gets from the documentary is twofold. Firstly that the American federal government under George Bush is a breathtakingly self-interested, incompetent joke. Secondly that the resilient people of New Orleans have been dispossessed, not of their houses and goods but of their dignity. The strength of the documentary is that it restores some of that by focusing on the honesty of the participants rather than attempting to make a material case for them. 7/10

Spike Lee is certainly not correct about levees being blown,but the truth is even worse.He is certainly nearer to the truth than people who blame "the force of the hurricane".As one who rode out both Katrina and Hurricane Betsy in the same house in Gentilly,it was obvious at the time that Katrina was no worse.The lake levees,which were properly built,though exposed to the full force of the storm,came through unscathed.What collapsed and flooded the main part of the city west of the Industrial Canal were those worthless,cracker box,stage-prop "flood walls" along the drainage canals that folded up and collapsed like cheap card tables the minute the water rose.Besides the Corps of Engineers,we can blame former Mayor "Slimy Sidney" Barthelemy"The Man Who Murdered A City".He deliberately forced out the veteran engineers of the Sewage & Water Board,so that no one would object to those worthless (but profitable) frauds.AND he had the valuable assistance of the alleged "newspaper",the Times Picayune which covered up his criminality. The incompetent stooges that Barthelemy replaced the experienced engineers with not only approved those worthless flood walls that the old engineers knew were disasters waiting to happen,but, still infesting the Sewage & Water Board to this day,insanely dredged the drainage canals in such a way as to remove what little foundations those flood walls had.The 17th St. Canal shows this graphically.This sits astride the parish line.Jefferson Parish engineers refused to allow this lunatic dredging on THEIR side of the canal, which is why only the Orleans side collapsed.A year before Katrina, people living along the drainage canals complained of salt water seeping into their yards, killing plants.To a COMPETENT,HONEST engineer this a clear sign that something was dangerously wrong with the levee foundations.But the Barthelemy "engineers" swept it under the rug,telling people that they were "imagining things".And as for blaming those who wouldn't evacuate,If one thing was proved, it is that evacuating a city this size IS NOT PRACTICAL.New Orleans could and should have been an impregnable fortress against hurricanes.The vast bulk of the misery caused by Barthelemy's Flood was the destruction of the homes,and LIVES of the "survivors",who now have to live,or rather EXIST in this horror.The empty city was picked clean by looters despite the presence of thousands of police and National Guard,which shows that it is the PEOPLE who are the real crime deterrents.Telling people,"Get out, let the hurricane and the looters destroy your homes and businesses,and we will give you sardine can trailers to live in" is typical of the garbage we hear from the government.