a dully presented piece of cinema about a truly worthy group of subjects.

Though the filmmaking is pedestrian, The Camden 28's timeless truths come through with resounding power.

The Camden 28 not only examines the animating forces of protest, but also the nature of betrayal, forgiveness and, ultimately, compassion.

With a brisk narrative that blends intrigue, tension, pathos and humor, Anthony Giacchino’s absorbing look back at a New Jersey antiwar group’s early-’70s arrest and trial is closer to living history than dry, academic harangue.

In revisiting the oppressive measures employed by the FBI during that era, the viewer is treated to a welcome message about the right, if not the duty, to challenge authority, especially in the face of corruption, intransigence and utter arrogance.

A documentary about a watershed trial in 1973 of some anti-war activists from the Catholic Left who took a stand on the basis of conscience.

Fond, stinging, and finally instructive, the film assembles a comprehensive look back at the actions, arrest, and prosecution of a group of political malcontents (most of them young Catholics and some of them priests) in the summer of 1971.

While no one will mistake director Anthony Giacchino for Michael Moore, the documentarian unfolds the drama of the arrest and eventual not guilty verdict of 28 Vietnam War protesters in 1971.

Giacchino has created a film in which every practical question has ethical implications...The Camden 28 opens our thinking to the values and calculations which guided these noble activists and their equally noble attorneys.