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21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A MUST SEE - REAL PEOPLE - REAL STORY, January 18, 2005
I love this movie. I bill myself as a hip hop/blackploitation film historian, but forgot about this classic. Only thru reading someone's top 10 movie's for forgotten Movies did I see this title and then ordered this movie. I loved this movie so much that I gave the vhs to a former gang member from Los Angeles (He loved it, and he is passing that around) and I ordered the dvd. I love the director and the real Sonny Carson doing commentary. They tell a grim tell of what the whole filming experience was like. They give you stories of Joe Dancer and the rest that only the directors commentary would provide. Anybody from Chicago over 40,Los Angeles over 40, New York will understand this experience. This is one of my new favorite movies to watch. I love the whole movie from beggining to end. I am 43 years old and see how hip hop, rap, gangsta behavior orginated from this classic. Movies have away of influencing the times. The Education of Sonny Carson has a way of influencing culture. (jocisoo7@aol.com for email me, I would love to have emails from new friends and we can share all of our street movie loves. peace and cheap hair grease. ( I grew up in Robert Taylor Holmes on the south side of chicago and migrated to Long Beach california to exscape gangs and wind up in the heart of west coast gang explosion of the 70's and 80's.
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Great Movie, horrible reproduction, January 8, 2003
There is something wrong with this DVD at chapter 5 where Sonny takes a hit of weed from 2 pimps at first I thought the echos I was hearing was part of the scene but as soon as the scene continued into the high school scene with his confrontation with the hawks the echoing continued. It ends as soon as chapter 6 starts up with the 1st gang battle between the lords and the hawks. I decided to check the old tape I had of TEO Sonny Carson and the guess what, the echos were not present anywhere in the movie. That means somwhere between the master print and the DVD master somebody forgot to check for audio sync in the transfer. To top it all off all throughout the movie there is video noise on moving edges; I though only amateur/hobbyist of VCD/SVCD/DVD did this. This is a great movie about the tough times that young black Sonny Carson faced in Brooklyn and rose up from. But the production that went into this DVD practically destroys any enjoyable experience one can get from this movie. So my suggestion is to wait for a re-release (not likely) or buy the tape; then you yourself can make a better DVD version of the movie than the guy jonfilms@aol.com did. (jonfilms@aol.com is in the credits for digitizing this movies and I think he is responsible for the error in transfer from master to DVD print). Great movie gone to waste because of carelessnes in the video transposing process.
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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gangs of NY - - Circa 1970 and REAL..., October 30, 2005
This movie was probably the first of its type. Many "life as a gang member" films came to follow it (especially in the 1980s and 1990s), but none really did so like this one... Most the ones that followed had a tendency to be too "Hollywood Melodramatic"-ish (at times cartoonish, and at other times somewhat preachy.) Without spoiling the ending, though Sonny Carson makes an important decision at the end of the film, the ending is anything but happy... in fact it is often critisized for its apparent "inconclusion", but I disagree... It is what makes the film so great. Almost like a documentary ("120 Blocks from Tiffany's") the film simply tells the story and leaves the big question to be asked and answered by the viewer. Sonny has "graduated" from his training by society and the system... the "happy" days of his violent education are over... but what next ? What is in his future ? Isn't everyone promised the American dream??? Sonny walks the straight path, but the odds still seem stacked against him. It would seem to me that if the film has been understood the viewer should leave it not demanding to know what happened to SONNY himself, but rather wondering about the plight of all the other SONNYs in the world... what society did to create the situation and what society or the communities are failing to do to resolve it ? Then we must debate whether Sonny's future is really in his own hands and if he does have a fair chance to make a life for himself. This, I assume was might have been the director's intention.
Though fans of 70s urban action type films will love the music and on-scene locations (and notice a few actors... for example the cop from the MAC and the gang leader from THE WARRIORS) beware, this is not just another 70's urban action thriller... it is an urban coming of Age Story, starting from Sonny's graduation from Jr. HS to his "education" (via the streets, the system) and ultimately jail, and his sad graduation into a lonely and questionable adulthood. Memorable and unique !
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