Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

Kirandeep Yoder The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Kayden This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

framptonhollis NAMBLA is the "North American Man Boy Love Association", and it is one of the stupidest things on our planet. As a person who believes that pedophiles have the power to be sympathetic and good people as long as they get help and refuse to act on their urges, NAMBLA is just plain disgusting. Instead of trying to get help and prevent urges, they want support for their urges! Obviously, a documentary about such an association that mostly features interviews with members will be filled with eye rolling, cringe-worthy moments-and it sure is! But, boy (no pun intended), is it interesting! This is among the most fascinating documentaries I've seen recently, because it refuses to condemn or praise such a group, therefore it has kind of split audiences in half and has created some controversy. People have labeled it as being everything from an anti- gay film to a pro-pedophilia film. In my opinion, it is neither of these. It mainly serves as a mostly anti-NAMBLA film just because of how little logic the members use and how creepy and disgusting they seem, despite the narration and film making style remaining totally neutral. Perhaps, it was best for the filmmakers to stay far away from any manipulative tactics, because the film is powerful and strange in its own special way. Also, there's plenty of unintentional humor throughout, such as the simultaneously cringey, disgusting, and funny moments with the absolutely demented Leyland Stevenson, a soft- speaking, yellow sweater wearing, delusional creep that attempts to defend himself while failing hilariously.

ElijahCSkuggs Chicken Hawk is a documentary that sheds a strange, immoral light on the world of pedophiles and more so the perverted and disillusioned group known as NAMBLA, aka the North American Man Boy Love Association. At first, I was unsure of the film's authenticity, but as it progressed, the various scenes and spots these men haunted validated its realness, which in turn, increased its disturbing effect. These homosexual men are as insane as any non-institutionalized person could be. They rant and explain how these children are in fact "flirting" and "desiring" such communication, with such a bizarre eloquence and intellectual manner, that is indeed interesting to listen to their bewilderingly, sick diatribe. The film is definitely con pedophiles, as would be any sane production company, but I believe the picture could have been a little more polished if it had kept a more neutral stance. Very decent documentary on the whacked out organization that is NAMBLA.

utahfilmmaker This movie will unfortunately never get the attention it deserves due to the unsettling subject matter, and the potential confusion some people may have between portraying child molesters and supporting them. This movie portrays several of the members of a group called NAMBLA, whose members promote child molestation as a viable and healthy activity and as even go so far as to claim that it is beneficial to the molested children. It resists the temptation to condemn them, and instead gives them enough rope to hang themselves, which they do. I say this movie is an absolute for any aspiring documentarian because it's very educational on the issue of objectivity. Although there is no voice-over condemning the pedophiles, the audience will leave with the message that these people are perverts and predators. Why? Simply because they *are* perverts and predators, and any objective portrayal of the subject cannot avoid making that clear. It seems almost as if the filmmakers go out on a limb to "show both sides" (witness the negative behavior of the KKK-like anti-nambla group that the filmmakers show), the pedophiles still end up the bad guys of the film, simply because they are the bad guys in real life and any footage of them shows it (I won't list a spoiler, but look at the last shot in the film for a great example of this). This is also an excellent psychological study of how some people, pedophiles in particular, will lie to themselves in order to remain happy. For example, see how the character Leland constantly talks about how it's the children who really go out of their way to "seduce" him, but then when we actually see footage of him interacting with a child outside a store, it becomes clear that he is the predator in the situation and that the child wants to leave, but in the interview after that scene, Leland STILL describes it in terms of the child "flirting" with him. The film makes clear that these people can only live with themselves by constructing an elaborate fantasy world.

Sagita2 I felt that the underlying treatment of this documentary was generally hostile to a fair understanding of men who love boys and the message we have for society.There were many "cheap shots" which I saw Adi taking in his film. Incidentally, not towards both sides, equally, but only towards boy lovers. There were technical maneuvers, such as making close-ups on people's teeth, or looking up at Leyland while he drove-and panning on old, dead trees they passed. And the music that was used-stuff that added to an emotion of we boy lovers not being all there, and even pathological.Now, if Adi had made such a film about black men who loved white women in the 1920s, people would see what I'm talking about. You'd have a movie of "pure" interviews and images from that time. There would be no attempt at analysis. The result would be a film in which there would be a huge uproar in society about the way in which no one attempted to humanize the black men adequately. Adi's career might be ruined before it even started. And you can bet that he would not even begin to allow himself to make an oversight like that.To conclude, i say that "CHICKEN HAWK: Men Who Love Boys" as a film is in the grey area between a constructive communication to the public, and a destructive one. For the media literate it should hold intriguing questions that can be thought about at length before coming to tentative conclusions. For the media illiterate, the film will most certainly be just one more reason to enhance and enable the increasing psychiatrick-industrial complex. They won't desire to look at we "perverts" as individuals, nor wonder how the film-maker got so close to such people who are supposedly forever "beyond the reach" of "ill-equipped" and "weak budgeted" law enforcement agencies. They'll just foam at the mouth and want to KILL KILL KILL like good citizens are supposed to do at the whim of imposed authority.