Ghosts of Cite Soleil (2007)

Packs an emotional punch, but that only partly makes up for the lack of a good story

Besides anti-Aristide diatribes mouthed a little too much on cue by these hooligans, there's also a French female relief worker mostly providing sexual relief to a gabby gangster. Not to mention 'relief worker' often as Third World code word for CIA spy.

Ghosts of Cite Soleil is a curiously unfocused, rambling film that never really settles on exactly what it wants to say or exactly which stories it wants to tell.

Leth ... gets us so close to life in Cité Soleil that we practically can hear the bullets and smell the garbage.

There's an immediacy to Ghosts of the Cite Soleil that's exceedingly rare for a documentary of any stripe.

Ghosts of Cite Soleil is too brief and limited in scope to provide a complete picture of Haiti's turbulent history, but its images of how so many of its citizens live and die on a daily basis -- is both heartbreaking and unforgettable.

More horrific than any tale from the crypt Hollywood could conceive.

Dutch director Leth is so enamored of the ugliness of it all that he doesn't even try to penetrate the noisy bravado that obscures the patches of truth that lie beneath the surface.

The ultra-violence of this microcosm [gang] society is what Ghosts is all about.

This flashy looking documentary scored by Haitian singer Wyclef Jean is such a frightening inside look at a poverty stricken society ruled by violence that it is a marvel that it got made.