UnowPriceless hyped garbage

ThedevilChoose When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

chris_wales It's well acted. It's honest (worthy perhaps is a better word). It's also very literal, not much in the way of drama, the pace is (understandably) slow and steady, local politics mixed with soap opera. The motivation of the characters isn't really made clear and they aren't really developed very much. I didn't feel like I got to know anybody by the end of the series. I'm sure it's true to the book etc, but as I said it's literal, a bit clunky, somewhat dull. There are important wider issues illustrated here of course, and I was generally glad I watched it. The IMDb minimum of ten lines makes for an extraordinarily long review in my opinion. I think they should reduce it to - say -7 or possibly 8 - lines at some point in the near future.

MovieHoliks I'm just about all the way through this terrific six-episode mini-series off HBO GO, and this is television at it's finest! "Show Me a Hero" is based on the 1999 nonfiction book of the same name by former New York Times writer, Lisa Belkin. The book detailed a white middle-class neighborhood's resistance to a federally-mandated scattered-site public housing development in Yonkers, New York circa late '80s/early '90s, and how these tensions affected the city as a whole. The show is fueled by the performance of Oscar Isaac as Nick Wasicsko, a former police officer, then Yonkers City Council member running for election to be mayor of Yonkers- eventually the youngest big-city mayor (1987–89) in the nation. This series really shows how that radical loud minority can sometimes rally political and public attention to negative stereotypes and misinformation- all based on unrealistic fears. Hmmm....sounds like what's kinda going on now with this whole "war on terror", ISIS, Iran, the Middle East, etc..???Isaac's performance as Wasicsko is the heart of the project, but also look for some really good performances from veterans Peter Riegert, James Belushi, Catherine Keener, Alfred Molina, Wynona Ryder, Bob Balaban, "The Walking Dead"'s Jon Bernthal, etc... Also, for Springsteen fans like myself, a total of TWELVE of his tracks (especially the earlier ones) were used in this to represent Wasicsko's mind set!

hitch-34 I'm a HUGE David Simon fan. Will read anything he's written (yes, I read the Corner, all 800-some-odd pages of it), and watch anything he produces. Homicide, The Wire, you-name-it. But I feel that he completely lost the plot here, no pun intended. The overall theme seems to be "integration and giving poor people houses in middle-class residential neighborhoods that don't want them is GOOD." I wondered, half-way through this (still determined to watch it in its entirety, because, hey, David Simon, right?) if Obama had picked up the phone and called HBO, saying, "hey, couldja find a book to convert into a series about forced low-income housing, and how great it all worked out, because I'm getting ready to jam that issue nationwide down the throats of other residents," rather than anyone in their right mind thinking that this was worthwhile *as entertainment.* ****SPOILERS START BELOW*****Was it worthwhile as, perhaps, a documentary? Sure--in about 1/6th of the time. Watching it for SIX HOURS simply to watch a real-life character disintegrate? And that's the "hero" of the show? Uh...???? The mayor--the guy who gets nominated for the JFK Profile In Courage award, self-destructs and eventually suicides. There's really no correlation, unless you want to assume that the only reason this guy didn't have a meteoric rise is because the evil councilmen hosed him on the housing issue.Which, mind you, he didn't actually CHAMPION. He just elected (yes, intentional pun) NOT to fight it because a) the City of Yonkers would go bankrupt if he didn't, and b), I think from the subtext that he didn't want to be sued, personally, if he didn't support it. He was elected, in fact, not because he CHAMPIONED the housing--but because he campaigned AGAINST it. So...sorry, where's the heroism here? If anything, the council people that fought it, even if utterly in the wrong, were more heroic because they stuck to their guns. They didn't switch horses in midstream, just because it was politically expedient. The entire award nomination was utter Political Correctness.Which--if you're watching with an educated and critical eye--is sort of the theme of the entire show. Political correctness run amok. Yes, a perfectly normal middle-class neighborhood is torn apart, in order to forcibly slam low-income housing right in the middle of it, in townhome groupings in something like 28 locations. The neighbors--even without being remotely bigoted (not to say that they weren't, but as a property owner) are vehemently opposed, as it will affect their property values.Throughout, the predominantly or all-white residents are effectively all portrayed as EVIL, except for the ONE resident who "sees the light" and decides to welcome the newcomers. Not one of the existing residents is shown as a perfectly normal person who would, quite naturally, have misgivings about what low-income housing, across the street from them, will do to their own property values. Nope--they were all stereotypical ranting bigots. {sigh} ALL the residents are low-income women of color with no man in the house, and with multiple children. (Stereotypes much?). Again, sure, it's story-telling, and by definition, has to be condensed and compressed, but--no pun intended-there are no shades of grey here. All the low-income residents are good; all the opponents are BAD. Only the mayor who changes his stance--not by choice, mind you--is "good." The performances are great. No doubt. But none--NONE--of the characters are particularly likable. The mayor is not. The council people basically all suck. The poor families have the only really likable characters. Again...stereotyping.It's just...it's a 60 minute tale, at MOST, bloated and inflated out to six hours. There aren't any heroes here, ironically. Rather than an enjoyable story that carries a moral lesson, it's a moral lesson and political and sociological stance forcibly rammed down your viewing throat, disguised as a story. And that disguise isn't very good.If you waste your time, don't say you weren't warned.

nil24 First let me just say, if you enjoyed season 4 and 5 of "The Wire", then you're absolutely going to love this. It has exactly the same raw and authentic feeling to it, but then again it's written and produced by David Simon who incidentally also played a big part in making "The Wire", so that's expected.Everything from the stellar cast, who include Oscar Isaac, James Belushi and Winona Ryder among others, to the production is great, and the story is extremely captivating. or at least the performance of the actors make it so.The show is based on true events. Namely the controversial low- income housing project which a federal judge had mandated the city of Yonkers, NY to build, in white middle-class areas in 1987. Do not be fooled by the seemingly dull premise, this is television at its best! The major themes tackle racism and segregation, an extremely relevant issue in the states to this day. It is actually quite appalling to watch the Yonkers city citizens debate on the issue, as it's clear that prejudice and racism are the reasons no one wants low-income housing in their respective districts. In other words, the show puts a very real and ugly face on the still existing racism in America. It follows Nic Wasicsko (Oscar Isaac), a young member of the city council, who suddenly finds himself elected Mayor in a race he was supposed to have lost (A character quite similar to The Wire's Tommy Carcetti, played by Aidan Gillen). - and his handling of the controversial political issue. This may sound boring, but it's actually the exact opposite. This is an Emmy material series!