Film Threat Review
IMDb - Read the comments, not the rating...
Greg's Preview (***1/2)
Rotten Tomatoes - Average Rating: 7.8/10
The Daily Herald - Grade:A-
From Greg's Preview:
World Premiere: American Spectrum, 2001 Sundance Film Festival (I personally think it should've been in competition) (that's where I reviewed it)
Distributor Notes: (2/26/02) This documentary was originally picked up by Artisan Entertainment, but it's now been reported by Entertainment Weekly that the deal has fallen through due to legal/licensing issues over the music that is heard during the fraternity house scenes; the rights for those many songs was never acquired; since this is a documentary, I think the hope, and this is what EW said too, was that the songs would fall under "fair use"... but Artisan didn't think it would, so the producers have parted ways and are looking for a new home, still aiming for a summer, 2002 theatrical release. (2/24/03) Well, that didn't happen, but the international rights are now being handled by Wellspring Cinema, with news about U.S. distribution expected to come later in the spring of 2003. (4/7/03) I've received an unconfirmed tip that this film may have been picked up by Film Movement, which distributed movies both theatrically and via a "DVD of the month" subscription plan.
Based Upon: The true story of the 1999 case of Lisa Gier King and the Delta Chi fraternity at the University of Florida.
Premise: In February, 1999 stripper Lisa Gier King and another woman were hired by the Delta Chi fraternity at the University of Florida for a show. After the other woman left, however, Ms. King came back, and that's where things start to go wrong. This documentary features actual footage shot by fraternity members while their "brothers" engage in various acts of sex and/or sexually-charged behavior with Ms. King. Also featuring interviews with Ms. King, law enforcement officials, rape advocates, and actual fraternity members, this film challenges your ability to judge whether what you see is "consensual" or "rape." The next morning, Ms. King ran out of the fraternity house half-naked, claiming that she'd been raped by Delta Chi, Mike Yahraus. When the police saw the video footage (edited by the fraternity members), they dropped the charge, and arrested Ms. King for filing a false charge... it's up to you to judge who was right.
Filming: The video footage of the fraternity party was shot on February 26th-27th, 1999. The rest of the film consists of news footage and intterviews from throughout 1999 and 2000.
Review (***1/2): Hype prevails at Sundance, but Raw Deal is a film that lived up to what I had heard, which namely, was that it was one of the most graphically sexual films ever made. It's also one of the most powerful doc's I've ever seen. The screening I attended started at 11:30 PM, followed by a Q&A that emptied out into the hallway, where the director and producers discussed it for another half hour or more. Of some documentaries, there is a final consensus, but with Raw Deal, it challenges the audience, and I think people find themselves (and others) not thinking what you'd think. In recent years, video has become something of a legal holy grail, but Raw Deal shows that it, like anything, can be manipulated and interpreted by both sides of a dispute, proving nothing. Director Billy Corben achieves this by doing what the Florida court did, showing us the footage so we can form our own opinions, even as all those involved tell us what they think we should see.
The video footage of the cut shown at Sundance verges on hard-core porn, with penises and vaginas fully visible, all within a drunken frat party atmosphere, with frat boys saying things like "we're going to rape a white trash whore." This is sensitive material, and one can feel a bit dirty seeing it, if not for the awareness that Alachua County not only didn't keep this under wraps, they released this video for public viewing (acting under Florida's "Sunshine Law"), which became something of a sex industry sensation (the video has been sold on the Internet). This is a rape case we're talking about. How would you feel if someone you knew said they were raped and then the tapes were publicly available?
There's another side, however, and that's that the video, as edited by the frat members before they gave it to the police, shows Ms. King as being a consentual sex partner... maybe. The reason the questions of "consent" and "rape" are so difficult to ascertain is that the video is used by the fraternity members' lawyers as a weapon against Ms. King, and the argument (that she displayed a great deal of encouraging sexual behavior to the boys) is a powerful one. That raises another concept that rape cases face far too often; that idea that women ask to be raped by their behavior. You're not going to find answers in Raw Deal... just more and more questions, but by positioning the facts to us so frankly, the audience gets to consider the issues personally, without one side overwhelming the other.
Going in, I thought I would leave Raw Deal with an idea of what happened in 1999. Afterwards, I definitely knew more about the case, but I still was stumped, and I am to this day. Was it rape? Was it consensual? How would I have voted on a jury (which, by the way, never happened, since the charges were dropped)? Frankly, I have no idea. And maybe that's yet another thing that's so effective, and scary, about Raw Deal, in that it shows how difficult it is for a jury to make a decision (effectively, the audience is a jury in this case). Now, having said that, I do think that some people will have very definite opinions of consent vs. rape, but they might not be what you would expect. For example, Lisa Gier King appeared recently on ABC's The View, and the female hosts, who had seen the film, basically tore into her for her behavior in the video. One might think women would, as a broad group, take Gier's side, but I don't think that's true. As much as you would think otherwise, I don't think this is a male/female issue, but rather, a very personal one that depends upon each of our own experiences and opinions... and we can also be swayed easily as new facts surface. For showing how fragile the line between "guilt" and "innocence" can lie, this is a valuable, important film.
SPECS:
~705Mb, 01:36:05
video: 640x480, 25.00 fps, XVID (XVID), 875,0 kbps
sound: 48000, Stereo, MP3, 128kbps[/color]
Note: This come from the australian retail DVD, that's the only way I know of getting this movie, so I finally bought it (it wasn't cheap...). It took me more than 20 hours to encode it (!), but I think the results are worth the efforts. If you have problem playing it please try opening it with VLC player.
An outstanding docu, as harrowing as Capturing The Friedmans yet more politically charged, currently unavailable in the US (and in most of the world as consequence),highly recommended. Download it, share it, lend it to your friends (whatever you think of the facts depicted).
THE LINK:
Raw Deal - A Question Of Consent (Billy Corben 2001 - documentary).avi 
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