FOOLS ON THIS HILL
"Your whole life revolves around this one thing." Yup, they're talking about an equestrian student who gets shot by her Olympic mentor in the stomach and God's knows where else. Uh, how the heck did we get here? Insanity plea? Yikes.
Anyway Untold: The Shooting at Hawthorne Hill is a Netflix documentary, unfolding like a sledgehammer and rounding out to about 63 blazing minutes. "Hawthorne Hill", well it doesn't celebrate the art of horse dressage, it nearly bypasses it and blankets it, instead focusing on an act of handgun violence where the perp is supposedly insane and the victim is kind of well, a little cray cray herself. What, did you think I was gonna mention the late Christopher Reeve, Sonny Leon, and who's the favorite in this year's Belmont Stakes? Get reals guys.
So OK, Untold: The Shooting at Hawthorne Hill features two incredibly unlikable main subjects (Lauren Kanarek, Michael Barisone) who come off like a couple of junior high outcasts having a continuous, catfight tiff. I mean that's what makes the docu rather nettlesome mind you, a constant he said, she said, she said, he done it that wears out its welcome long before the credits come up (and said credits literally add to the melodrama).
Yeah "Hawthorne Hill's" archives (from 2017 to 2019) are effective, yeah the interviews are aplenty, yeah Grace McNally's direction is veritably baseline, and yeah the editing is crisp as an autumn afternoon in my home state (that would be Michigan). But what's the point in having a pissing contest between Barisone and Kanarek that threatens to totally irk the audience. I mean these people would be better off bickering via a debate on CNN or participating in some congressional hearing Roger Clemens-style. Actually I would probably turn that noise off anyway. "Shoot this moon."
Written by Jesse Burleson
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