Killing Them Safely

With the intensified focus on use of force in police departments, the unsettling documentary "Killing Them Safely" couldn't be timelier.

Mr. Berardini's packed documentary makes its case early and often, perhaps too often, but it's more chilling than your average issue film.

Berardini's doc vigorously proves that despite their marketing, Tasers are not the answer. They are only means to a bigger, deadlier problem.

Relying entirely on flawed cases and weak lawsuits from the mid-2000s, "Killing Them Safely" is a very poor indictment of TASER International, the manufacturer of the widely used and mostly safe electronic weapon.

Footage of the now-wealthy Smiths being deposed is damning, the brothers' legal jiujitsu is appalling, and the stories of deaths are heartbreaking.

An important account of shifts in policing tactics and the problematic interaction between law enforcement and private companies.

Killing Them Safely is, above all, an example of excellent, ethical, fair, and balanced journalism allowing both sides to state their case.

A dark comedy about humanity's knack for quickie solutions and our ability to lie to ourselves, especially when our noble deeds go awry.

Though at times not for the fainthearted, Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle takes subject matter many of us probably give little thought to at all in day to day life and asks us to consider it deeply.

Therein lies Berardini's critique: using naught but his subjects' own words, he paints a portrait of men who have been dazzled by profits at the expense of their ethics.