LIFE OF CRIME (HBO): NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH, SO HELP ME GOD
Life Of Crime captures the raw despair and cancerous pain of active addiction through the lives of three people in the streets of Newark, New Jersey over the course of thirty-six years. This documentary is not for the faint of heart. Dark? It is pitch black. Heartbreaking? It is soul crushing. Honest? Brutally. It is filled with Old Testament levels of brutality. If you’re looking for an easily digestible, ficticious fairytale to distract you from your workday, this aint it sunshine. The nature of addiction is cunning, baffling, and insidious. The insanity is incomprehensible to those who haven’t lived through it, or at the very least, studied it. Buckle up. And remember, the stories of Freddie, Rob, and Deliris are just three out of millions and millions.
Filmmaker Jon Alpert takes his audience into the lives of these tortured souls with intimate discipline. The documentary starts out in 1986 and sets the viewer up for a twisted ride that will flip your stomach and hurt your heart. Any light in the eyes of these individuals slowly diminishes. As the calendar moves from one year to the next, the drugs rob them of their dignity and bring sheer terror with no daily reprieve. Brief moments of hopefulness are often followed by disheartening episodes of substance induced brokenness. These are the harsh realities of active addiction that are spearheaded by the drug epidemic in America.
There were moments that were difficult to watch. I held my breath and closed by eyes. Some scenes scarred my thoughts. These aren’t villians in Gotham. These aren’t actors on some back lot of some studio in Hollywood. These are human beings. They have children. They have families. They have hopes and dreams. Their lives aren’t meaningless. Sure, a lot of people could care less about their stories - who cares about another dead junkie, right? Well, it’s 2021 and these stories are no longer isolated in cities like Newark. The wealthy suburbs are plagued by addiction. This crisis has stretched to desolate towns connected by country roads, hundreds of miles away from major cities. This is a world that is no longer foreign to some of us.
A lot of people enjoy watching gruesome horror movies about serial killers and demonic possession. There is no serial killer in the history of mankind that has stacked bodies like addiction has. No fictional movie about exorcisms can come close to the demonic possession featured in Life Of Crime. The grips of addiction will strangle you with ease then toy with your dead body like a cat with a mouse. People need to see this. This is what drug addiction looks like. The disease of addiction is powerful and needs to be combatted from all angles. How many more people need to die? We must educate ourselves and our peers with the pillars of honesty, open mindedness, and willingness. If somebody has a spiritual awakening and decides to get help through the pain and suffering of Freddie, Rob, and Deliris… their lives will not be in vain.
