Fear & foreboding in NY

Giuliani Time

Directed by Kevin Keating

Unless your head's been buried in sand for the past decade, you probably won't find the ideas and information revealed in Giuliani Time particularly surprising, but it provides a credible summation of news reports and pointed analysis of the legacy of our former mayor. Kevin Keating's 118-minute Giuliani Time (subtitled "The Man Who Would be King") employs notable New Yorkers-David Dinkins, Ed Koch, Ralph Nader, Al Sharpton, Norman Siegel, Mary Brosnahan, William Bratton, Donald Trump and other talking heads (47 of them, in all)-interspersed with well-selected archival footage, to trace Rudy Giuliani's evolution from a Mafia-connected kid and Catholic school superstudent to his meteoric rise in the Reagan-led Republican party and finally his ascension to the post-9/11 post of "America's Mayor."

The title, Giuliani Time, is copspeak for the period of power and largess enjoyed by the NYPD during the reign of Mayor Rudy, whose aggressive law and order agenda encouraged widespread police roundups of minority males, and as fomented abusive "stop and frisk," "zero tolerance" and "broken windows" strategies-which are alleged to have led to the shocking killing of Amadou Diallo and other alarming incidents, with subsequent federal investigations of Giuliani's policies and initiatives.

A well-researched and documented expose, Giuliani Time tracks Rudy's roller coaster ride through the Brooklyn Museum fiasco, his aborted Senate race and the catastrophic 9/11 attacks that transformed lame-duck Giuliani into a secular saint: a universally-acclaimed hero, hailed as Time magazine's Man of the Year, knighted by Queen Elizabeth and a huge fundraiser for the Bush/Cheney administration.

The film presents a "lest you've forgotten" scenario-since Giuliani's name seems to come frequently into play when senatorial and/or gubernatorial spots are up for grabs, or there're high diplomatic or administrative positions to be doled out. Giuliani Time does succeed in providing an engrossing perspective on the man.