Debuting as it did at 2017’s Sundance Film Festival, it is very difficult not to compare The Force to another documentary in this year’s class, Whose Streets? The guerrilla-style Whose Streets? is an expressive, urgent note sent from underground. The Force, in comparison, is the official story.
Shooting for two years inside the beleaguered Oakland police department, Peter Nicks has some outstanding access for the first two-thirds of the movie. (At the end, when some constabulary crap hits the fan, the spigot appears to have been turned off.) The Force begins with new police chief Sean Whent a year into his appointment to the department. It’s been 11 years since the OPD was put under federal supervision following a string of misconduct cases. Whent’s latest reforms are concurrent with the killing of Michael Brown and subsequent police riots in Ferguson, Missouri.
The graduating class at the police academy, predominantly white, takes seminars from African American community liaisons. Whent himself expresses how every cop on the beat is the most visible representative of the United States government, and that a degree of distrust of the government is the bedrock of American culture. Another specialist explains how in modern times, every cop with a badge faces multiple civilians with video-enabled smartphones.
There’s a hint of “cover your ass” with that warning, but there are no wistful sighs about the good ol’ days anywhere in this movie. The cops we meet have little desire to crack skulls; they are driven to serve the community as best they can.
The best two sequences that speak to this point involve Whent nodding, agreeing and apologizing at a community meeting in which he is condemned for not aiding with break-in calls in the lower-income neighborhoods. We just don’t have the manpower, he sheepishly admits, referring to how violent crime always takes precedence, and how his officers are already stretched thin on 12-hour shifts without lunch breaks. It’s not the answer anyone wants, but at least it is an answer.
Also enlightening is seeing the young officer Joe Cairo beautifully defuse a situation that could easily have turned into another statistic of police overreach. A woman is hit by a car, and as she is being hauled off in an ambulance, her brother, fueled by understandable anger, is itching for a fight. Cairo goes through every by-the-book step, including drawing his Taser. He threatens force, but doesn’t use it, and protects the public.
Later, however, some cracks in Whent’s new regime begin to show. There are a few officer-involved shootings, but the body-worn cameras lessen most cries of police culpability. (Some protesters accuse the cops of editing the footage, however.) However, a third shooting, in which no body cameras were worn, involves the previously laudable Cairo.
You’d think Nicks would follow up on this, but his film seems to be going for a Frederick Wiseman fly-on-the-wall approach. This both works and doesn’t work. There’s also plenty of footage of Whent in spin mode. It’s hard not to sympathize with someone who has previously shown you just how much of a good guy he is, but the lack of “another side” eventually starts to smell funny.
Soon the Oakland police department completely falls apart thanks to a sex and prostitution scandal. Whent retires (he was probably forced to do so) and the force burns through three new chiefs in nine days. It’s a fascinating collapse, but by this point Nicks’s insider footage is mainly derived from press conferences. Basically, just when the movie gets really good, they pull the plug.
Despite this anticlimax, The Force is nothing if not another intriguing portrayal of enormous enclosed systems, and the difficulty in turning big ships around. I’ll take the movie (and my mother) at face value and say that most people in the world aren’t horrible, and would like to do the right thing. Circumstances can make the big win seem impossible, but smaller victories, even temporary ones, are all around us. It’s a mixed emotion, and fits the bill for this movie, which ultimately is a missed opportunity with a few sterling moments.
