Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982-1992

[Let it Fall] accomplishes what straightforward nonfiction narrative can do in the best of circumstance.

What makes the astoundingly edited "Let It Fall" so powerful is that it's an oral history, told through many angles: residents, police officers, victims, families of the victims, witnesses, jurors and a host of others.

Not wasting a minute of its two-and-a-half-hour running time, this remarkable documentary echoes O.J: Made in America by examining the Los Angeles riots.

Laying a groundwork of personal testimony and archival assemblage that tells the story of what Ridley calls "the uprising," there's directness when needed, detail (often horrific) when appropriate, and complexity where least expected.

Teeming with acts both heroic and reprehensible, John Ridley's wrenchingly humane documentary, "Let It Fall: Los Angeles 1982-1992," reveals the Los Angeles riots as the almost inevitable culmination of a decade of heightening racial tensions.

The strength of "Let It Fall" is in its remarkable contemporary interviews, compelling both for the people recorded and the way the conversations are allowed to unfold.

This long documentary (two hours, 24 minutes) takes us back 10 years before the L.A. riots and shows us events which led up to them. The film pays particular attention to the relationships between police, blacks and the Korean American communities.

An essential documentary that covers the heightened racial tensions in LA from 1982-1992.

'Let It Fall''s construction is shrewd: it moves fast from the verdict into the riot, far faster than the other films, but effectively dramatizes the speed with which the conflict escalated.

It's like looking into the heart of all those single flames that made the conflagration.

Wrenching, must-see docu probes racial violence in L.A.

Juxtaposing footage of the actual events with the narrative of each of their storytellers, Let It Fall does its part to maintain a sense of urgency around a narrative that still needs to be discussed, interrogated, and accounted for.