An eye-opening view of people usually ignored or taken for granted.
Comment
08/08/04
Union Square (2003)
50 %
Reviews Counted: 14 Fresh: 7 Rotten:7 Average Rating: 5.8/10
Synopsis: UNION SQUARE is a powerful look into the world of homeless heroin addicts that live in UNION SQUARE PARK in New York City. Peer into the lives of seven individuals that allowed the cameras to follow and capture their trials and tribulations while living and hustling on the streets of New... [More]
Genre: Dramas
Director: Stephen J. Szklarski
Reviews
1 - 14 (sorted by date; UK critics are listed first)
The film attempts to affect an air of dispassionate objectivity, but generally comes across as an exercise in exploitation.
06/24/04
Top Critic
Without a well-delineated political or social framework, Union Square offers little that we didn't already know from, say, The Panic in Needle Park or Christiane F.
06/23/04
To most New Yorkers, the street addicts they encounter daily are nameless and faceless, and Union Square helps to humanize them.
05/28/04
Stephen J. Szklarski's video documentary tracks the lives of seven young drug addicts who live in and around Union Square Park in Manhattan.
05/27/04
Top Critic
The material is vivid and harrowing, although the movie provides little analysis or larger-scale context.
05/27/04
The total effect, of course, is abject sadness as we helplessly watch each enact a unique anti-success story in an inverted reality show.
05/25/04
Its unvarnished look at life in the slow lane exerts a hypnotic fascination.
05/24/04
Top Critic
Like its seven subjects, it can't see past the immediate demands of addiction, and the film becomes a seemingly endless string of scenes depicting shooting up, nodding out and waiting around for the next fix.
05/21/04
Spares no feelings as it peels away the harsh truths of living as a slave to a drug habit.
05/09/04
Brutal, mesmerizing documentary on New York heroin addicts. Not for the faint-hearted.
03/29/04
1 - 14 (sorted by date; UK critics are listed first)
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