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Sheriff (2005)
Synopsis: Sheriff Ronald E. Hewett oversees the rural Southern community of Brunswick County, North Carolina. Heading up what used to be a backwards, back-woods department, Hewett strives to maintain order and civility in a region fraught with murder, robbery and the occasional theft of ceramic... Sheriff Ronald E. Hewett oversees the rural Southern community of Brunswick County, North Carolina. Heading up what used to be a backwards, back-woods department, Hewett strives to maintain order and civility in a region fraught with murder, robbery and the occasional theft of ceramic lawn ornaments. To accomplish this impossible task, Hewett uses the only tools at his disposal -- God, guns, and the hundreds of blood relatives that populate his jurisdiction. At once brutal, bizarre and funny, "Sheriff" is a feature-length documentary movie that employs the pure cinema verite technique of Frederick Wiseman: no interviews, no music, no voice-overs. The result is an unexpected, intimate portrait of a complex man trying to do good in a bad, bad world. [More]
Genre: Education/General Interest
Reviews
Not only do you feel like you know Sheriff Hewett, but you realize that fighting crime is more problem-solving than gun-slinging.
Kraus' short, no-frills documentary is a model of fly-on-the-wall filmmaking.
An admirably realistic portrait of police life, pointedly different from the sensationalism of TV's Cops.
Sheriff may have a point to make about the impact of family, roots and religion on the changing face of rural America, but the film, while admirably restrained and competently made, is too polite to clarify that.
Kraus seems determined to juxtapose the serenity of Hewett's downtime with the thrills of the dirty work, but as seen in the film it's all the same.


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