3 1/2 Minutes, Ten Bullets movie review (2015)
Dunn was ultimately convicted of first-degree murder in fall, 2014. An earlier 2014 proceeding found Dunn guilty of second degree murder for shooting at the other teenagers in the car, but jurors could not agree on the first-degree murder charge for killing Davis. Dunn's legal team invoked Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law, which allows for the possibility of legally killing another person that the killer believes might pose a lethal threat. Davis' parents have subsequently called for a repeal of that law as well as tighter restrictions on guns.
This all adds up to as explosive a documentary topic as you'll ever see.The violence originates in multi-layered resentment—racial, cultural and generational—with "Stand Your Ground," gun control and machismo stirred into the mix.
Luckily, Marc Silver and his collaborators avoid anything that might seem inflammatory. They explore the case in empathetic, detached images that are carefully composed, and often beautiful in a sad way, and mostly resist the urge to treat people's suffering as a thing to be photographed. Shots of towering trees, knotted highways and urban southern panoramas squashed beneath blue-grey cloud banks contribute to a sense of spiritual torment.
The documentary favors Davis' side of the story, partly because Jordan's parents gave the filmmakers access to their lives and stories, while Dunn, his girlfriend and his family apparently didn't. (They're represented in the film mainly through courtroom shots of them testifying and listening to others' testimony.)
But mostly the movie appears to side with Davis' parents because Dunn's story is full of contradictions and holes. He comes off seeming like very bad news even though Silver omits or glosses over details that might have made him even more unsympathetic, such as the fact that he and Rouer left the gas station where Dunn had shot a stranger to death without reporting the incident to the police, then went back to their motel and ordered a pizza.
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