Force, The

Sprawling, immediate, and complex, Peter Nicks’s vérité documentary The Force
moves like a pulsing, timely thriller. In 2014, after over a decade of federal monitoring
for misconduct and civil rights abuses, the Oakland Police Department hires Chief
Sean Whent in hopes of bridging an historically tense divide between its officers and
the community they serve. The Force captures everything; it hovers over Oakland’s
evening skies and rides inside speeding police vehicles, granting viewers breathless
firsthand access to some of law enforcement’s most dangerous jobs. With fly-on-thewall
intimacy, we see a department trapped in transition, desperate to shed its corrupt
image but also challenged by an increasingly organized and urgent Black Lives Matter
movement erupting right outside its doorstep. – Harry Vaughn, Sundance Film Festival