Wow. Just Wow.
A truly shocking documentary that really opens your eyes to the destructiveness drugs can have on someone's life.
From around the five minute mark when I saw a man abuse his girlfriend and slap her around I knew this was going to be a no holds barred, eye opening and VERY dark look at how peoples lives can be utterly destroyed by drugs, but more importantly the poor decisions that they make which leads them to drugs and crime.
Life of crime follows three damaged individuals trying to make a living and just plain survive: Rob, Deliris & Freddie, and amazingly it follows them as the title suggests from 1984-2020. That's a dedicated camera man right there.
At first it started slow, not the film itself but the gradual downfall of each person, showing Rob and His friend Mike stealing small things like bed sheets and T-shirts and making a quick buck doing so. We get a glimpse and their family life and in all of the cases it's dysfunctional to say the least. As previously mentioned the scene of Robs friend Mike hitting his girlfriend had me pretty stunned, mainly because of the act itself but also because there was a full family in the house just carrying on like nothing was happening. The girl cry's and begs but no one cares. That's scary right there. She talks to the camera man and says she's getting an abortion because not only is she dating a woman beater, shes also pregnant. And to top it all off she's only been dating him for 2 months.
The scumbag Mike boasts about how the police will never catch him and then we switch to him in handcuffs crying like the baby he is. He receives a long sentence in prison but we never find out what happened to his abused girlfriend, hopefully he rots in prison while she went on to live a good life.
The film continues to show drug use and court cases but At one point it switches to a "9 months later" screen and when Rob reappears it looked like he aged 10 years. He was missing teeth, looked gaunt and truly resembled the junkie he was. Scary that only 9 months had passed and his life looked it was heading off a cliff.
Deliris is a hooker now selling her body to make a quick buck and Freddy is bouncing in and out (But mainly in) of prison.
One thing that hit me was I felt so sorry for the kids, especially deliris's kids, seeing that little girl asking why her mom didn't love her was heartbreaking, but the total lack of care was even worse. Seeing them roaming the streets at 1-2 in the morning, while their mom scores drugs up the street. Seeing them be left alone most of the time to the point of her son being on the edge of the open window and having to be told it's dangerous by the cameraman was just plain depressing to watch. Sometimes it's hard to witness the decisions which caused a situation like this to unfold but in life of crime all of that is told to you like a stone cold slap in the face making you realise how it all ended up so bad.
Many years pass and we reach 2000 now and Freddie is saying he's too old to think about things like escaping prison. It doesn't state each persons age but he looks at least 15 years older since the last time we saw him, but that was only in 1994. His body is withering away. It also doesn't help he has HIV and stopped taking his medication because he thought it would give a false positive reading for Marijuana.
Deliris is skin and bone, showing her track marks all over from the needles and it's honestly just sad to see. Rob looks like he's doing better but well... he's still locked up.
We see some positives as deliris gets clean and Rob gets out of prison and starts working, that's one thing that I took from all this, that the road to the end isn't always a straight decline, it's a bumpy road filled with ups and downs, and a lot of times these 3 people look like normal respectable members of society, but when they fall, they fall hard.
Throughout this film I found myself wanting to know more, wanting and wishing them to do well, when ultimately I knew what was going happen.
It was heartbreaking to see deliris watch Rob walk down the hallway while she stared at him, high as a kite and weighing about the same as a bag of flour.
Cut to a few years later and Freddie has passed away and is laying there, lifeless and yet somehow still with a story to tell. The Robert death is one that truly haunted me, this is something that will give most people nightmares, a badly decomposed body on full display in front of the camera. I don't want to go into too much detail but Rob had either knowingly or unknowingly went out on a last high and his body wasn't found until a LONG time later. His bloated discoloured skin is something that I won't forget in hurry. Really disturbing.
In 2019 we see that Deliris has survived and turned her life around, she doesn't weigh 10 pounds anymore and in fact looks well fed and much happier which was nice to see, she spends her days trying to help people get off drugs but 99% of them don't want help or don't last in any "program" that they attend. What was shocking to see was a small girl who was appeared at the start now fully grown up and addicted to drugs, toothless and looking higher than a jet. Almost endlessly the cycle seems to continue.
Sadly in 2020 Deliris passes away and in what seems like a cruel ending we see the message "The pandemic shutdown took away deliris's support services. She had been clean for 13 years. Five dollars worth of drugs killed her"
that was pretty hard to take because I hoped someone would make it out and beat this terrible affliction, however this isn't a made up story and so often with life it doesn't always have a nice ending. That's something that most people only realise when their loved ones pass, but we get to see it for better or worse on full display with this documentary.
Overall this documentary is absolutely not for someone who's easily upset or disturbed. It exposes how brutal life can be on certain people and how wrong choices can lead to a life of misery and despair. More than that It can feel suffocating at times but I honestly think it's a provocative and very necessary film that shows just how damaging life can punish you and how we all need to continue fighting our demons each and every day but also take the time to appreciate what we have. This film honestly scared me but it also made me appreciate it as a work of art with a powerful message behind it. The commitment to put something like this together is unmatched in anything I've ever seen. Plus congratulations to the cameraman Jon who somehow managed to sleep at night.
42 out of 43 found this helpful.
Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink
