Let The Fire Burn (2013)
Average Rating: 8.1/10
Reviews Counted: 14
Fresh: 13 | Rotten: 1
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 8.1/10
Critic Reviews: 7
Fresh: 6 | Rotten: 1
No consensus yet.
liked it
Average Rating: 4.6/5
User Ratings: 126
Movie Info
In the astonishingly gripping Let the Fire Burn, director Jason Osder has crafted that rarest of cinematic objects: a found-footage film that unfurls with the tension of a great thriller. On May 13, 1985, a longtime feud between the city of Philadelphia and controversial radical urban group MOVE came to a deadly climax. By order of local authorities, police dropped military-grade explosives onto a MOVE-occupied rowhouse. TV cameras captured the conflagration that quickly escalated-and resulted
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All Critics (14) | Top Critics (7) | Fresh (13) | Rotten (1)
[A] lean and deeply unsettling archival-footage documentary.
Top CriticThe pure-archive approach leaves a taste of despair; civic governance, it seems, can't even promise not to kill you.
Jason Osder's riveting documentary chronicles the escalating confrontations between the Philadelphia police and the radical group Move.
Seamlessly fashioned from television news footage, public hearings and other sources, the movie relives an incredible chapter in American history.
A first-rate piece of forensic filmmaking.
There's never enough information.
First-time filmmaker Osder, with masterful editing by Nels Bangerter, has crafted a captivating and taut documentary.
Let the Fire Burn offers an even-handed depiction of the racial conflict that led to the conflagration on Osage Avenue.
The second most striking thing about Jason Osder's documentary Let The Fire Burn is that it's composed entirely of archival footage. But the most striking thing is the actual story it tells with that footage.
An unnerving, all-archival account of Philadelphia citizens suddenly terrorized by the unchecked violence of rogue "law and order."
Let the Fire Burn outshines the lackluster likes of Our Nixon by combining the death-trip of a Senna with the radical history of Black Power Mixtape.
Telling its riveting, despairing tale entirely through archival footage, the terrific documentary "Let the Fire Burn" has the force and intrigue of a courtroom thriller.
...superbly cool-headed
Audience Reviews for Let The Fire Burn
Super Reviewer
On the other hand, the format leaves room for some blind spots, namely the alley behind the MOVE headquarters where it is implied that Philadelphia policemen may have gathered to settle scores from a previous confrontation with MOVE that left a policeman dead and for which 9 MOVE members were convicted on sentences lasting decades. At the same time, three policemen were acquitted on assault charges of a MOVE member, even though they were captured on videotape.
At first, in the 1970's, MOVE claimed to be a self-sufficient organization funded on self-defense means like the Black Panthers, as one of the founders had been in the Black Panthers, too, while being labeled a cult and terrorist organization by outsiders.(There is nothing so frightening to a racist than an armed black man.) Here, some more blind spots arise, as questions arise about the internal activities of MOVE, as they also angered their neighbors, and eventually the city government. Its later incarnation in 1984-1985 was even more combative, and I would not disagree with a commenter, that at the time, they sought to directly confront the police, a battle they could not hope to win.
Super Reviewer
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On the other hand, the format leaves room for some blind spots, namely the alley behind the MOVE headquarters where it is implied that Philadelphia policemen may have gathered to settle scores from a previous confrontation with MOVE that left a policeman dead and for which 9 MOVE members were convicted on sentences lasting decades. At the same time, three policemen were acquitted on assault charges of a MOVE member, even though they were captured on videotape.
At first, in the 1970's, MOVE claimed to be a self-sufficient organization funded on self-defense means like the Black Panthers, as one of the founders had been in the Black Panthers, too, while being labeled a cult and terrorist organization by outsiders.(There is nothing so frightening to a racist than an armed black man.) Here, some more blind spots arise, as questions arise about the internal activities of MOVE, as they also angered their neighbors, and eventually the city government. Its later incarnation in 1984-1985 was even more combative, and I would not disagree with a commenter, that at the time, they sought to directly confront the police, a battle they could not hope to win.