'Giuliani Time' Recalls Ex-Mayor's Less Heroic Deeds

The film tarries at that unfortunate pass in Giuliani's mayoralty: Hizzoner's tone-deaf reaction to a growing outcry about police brutality and thousands of questionable arrests. In 2000, undercover officers shot to death Patrick Dorismond, a black security guard, during a drug crackdown. (Dorismond, as it turns out, had no involvement with drugs. He thought the undercover cops were robbers, and was shot while resisting arrest.) Afterward, Giuliani directed his officials to unseal the man's juvenile record and opined that Dorismond was "no altar boy."

The movie leans heavily on Village Voice journalist Wayne Barrett's evisceration of a biography, titled "Rudy!" Barrett dug deep in Giuliani's biographical back yard and unearthed gems, not least the information that Mr. Clean's father was a stickup man and loan shark who swung a mean baseball bat. The film also shines a light on Giuliani's record as associate attorney general in Ronald Reagan's Justice Department, where he led efforts to deport Haitian boat people.

"Repression," Giuliani announces after returning from a meeting with President Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, "simply does not exist now" in Haiti.

Then there's the baroque weirdness that was Giuliani's second term, particularly a several-week stretch when the mayor announced that he had prostate cancer and was dropping out of the Senate race against Hillary Rodham Clinton, that he was leaving his wife (who learned of her husband's intents while watching the news conference on television) and taking up with his girlfriend.

Oh yeah, his divorce lawyer also mentioned that the mayor was (temporarily) impotent. Maybe this was more than we needed to know. But Giuliani and his id always were inseparable.

So the protagonist is outsized. How is the documentary as cinema? It drags a bit. Kevin Keating is a veteran cameraman who has worked on Academy Award-winning documentaries such as "When We Were Kings" and "Harlan County, U.S.A." And this movie has a touch of the latter film's agitprop. It probably won't convince partisans to switch sides.

Curiously, the movie suffers from not enough Rudy. The opera bouffe that was Rudy was always fascinating. He grooved on conflict -- it was his charm and his weakness. I wanted more of those news conferences where he lashed at "actually really jerky" questions before turning on his heel. Or the neighborhood meetings where he'd go pop-eyed and rhetorically slice open a schoolteacher who had the nerve to challenge Hizzoner on class size.

When "Giuliani Time" gives a glimpse of this Giuliani, it's mesmerizing. So, the smiling mayor fields a phone call during his weekly radio show. The caller is angry about city cuts to food stamps and Medicare aid for the disabled.

Hizzoner is a pit bull to the chase.

"Hey, John," Giuliani tells his caller, "what kind of hole are you in? There's something that's really wrong with you. . . . We'll send you psychiatric help because you really need it."

As it happens, the caller, John Hynes, needs real help. A disabled lawyer, he suffers from Parkinson's disease, and he's had his benefits cut off and he's running out of medicine.

Nothing chills the blood so thoroughly as the sight of a powerful man turned gleeful bully.

Giuliani Time (130 minutes, at Landmark's E Street Cinema) is not rated and contains profanity.