Story Great; Cinematics Just Okay; Theme Gets Confused

Rating: 4/10 (31 January 2018)

A diehard fan of Bigelow, I really expected more here.
The story, like so many others, tells a tale of true life back in a dark time in our history. It helps us not forget the evil which lies in man's soul, as well as brings us happiness knowing and observing how far we have come and evolved since that time.
Bigelow does the story well, although there are partings here and there from fact. The musicians, for instance, are cleverly tweaked chronologically to play into the story. However, none of the departures from truth negatively (in my opinion) effect the overall story.
The cinematics (and this is from a Bigelow fan) were not her best work. Recognizable landmarks placed into the script could have helped the viewer become closer to the story being told. Instead, it felt like stock footage instead of actual eyewitnessing.
The theme is where it got very confusing. Although the purpose is obviously to tell a story which happened long ago, the viewer is left with wondering what the producer's purpose was here.
In today's society, the public is overwhelmingly fatigued from the cries of wolf every time force is used against differing colors of men. The news media succinctly adds to this by mentioning races in use of force reports. Even the Black Lives Matter movement, whose byline of "Hands Up Don't Shoot" is founded and based on the Ferguson shooting, adds to this by continuing to use a byline and message found to be false by the Justice Department's investigation and the fifty-three independent witnesses in that incident. Continuing and never-ending screams, most often accompanied by violence, of mysterious "systemic" or "institutional" racism (aka "ghost hunting") is what kills any hope of the message being meaningful and fatigues society to ignore that one-in-a-million legitimate causes for complaint.
So was the message from the producer to add to the pile of today's faux-outrage? If so, it was not clear. Or is the producer's purpose to draw a distinction between the TRUE racist behaviors and assaults and deaths of the 1960s, thereby highlighting in contrast to today's cries of racism with, if ever, little fact and at best circumstantial opinion used to levy such great claim. Again, it is not clear.
For myself, I got the message that the producer was trying to highlight what it TRULY means to have racist cops compared to today's complaints of the same never coming close. As well, the message I saw was celebratory in how far we have evolved and how, minus a couple of drops in an ocean of policemen, we do not have that problem today. If this was truly the message, this movie would have been well done and truly a "thinker" - something to ponder - if the message was indeed as such and was strikingly clearer. For now, one must wonder because that message isn't clear enough to determine either way. The message you see may be completely different than mine.