1971

The story told in "1971" is a very important one for every American and I do recommend you see it. However, despite this I have to be honest...I had a very hard time staying awake during the film. Normally I don't have this trouble but think it wasn't just me...the film, despite about some important events, comes off as very slow. See it...just try to have some caffeine with you.

The story in this film is super-important. At the height of the anti-Vietnam War movement, an unknown group of dissidents broke into a local FBI field office in Pennsylvania and stole the documents in the office. This was important for two reasons: the documents held important evidence of illegal FBI activities and copies of the documents were sent to the press! Now, for the first time, concrete evidence was known to exist that talks about FBI harassment of innocent Americans the agency saw as subversives! So, breaking up marriages and manipulating innocent people was fair game for the agency--mostly because there was practically no oversight of the FBI.

So why is this important today? Well, with increasing surveillance by not only the FBI but Homeland Security, we once again have the POTENTIAL for abuses of civil liberties. Additionally, with the WIKILEAKS and Edward Snowden stories in the news, the events of 1971 seem very familiar once again. Overall, an interesting story told in a rather dry and low energy fashion that every American, on the right, left or in the middle, should see.