first off where do you come off yapping about something you know nothing about. no it's not about flashy flashy or just showing off muscles. it's about everyday living. not even the fact of not have a father around when growing up. because if you paid any attention to the movie for a lot of people thats all they know. lets take you for example you grew up the way you did with or without a father around right? well basically thats why you are the way you are because you grew up that way. same here. for many people their fathers and even some mothers was living the life style so what do that leave the child... do you follow me? i truly think you do not need to watch shows like this if you can't understand because actually it's more too it than what you can ever begin to understand. its not by choice its by force. can we help the way we are. and if you gonna be a sorry low self esteem fool & try to degrade the black community of south central Los Angeles based off a movie then i think you need to go and move there and experience it face to face. go & try to live the life. but i can guarantee you this, without even know who you are or ever meeting you in person you will not survive no more than a few minutes... so my point again is it's not a movie its a actual life style for many people and to give you a little more knowledge that movie was made to show the world and let people tell their story that was never told . so you go find a Adam Sander or Jim Carey movie and make your comments off of them.. since you want to judge movies for a living chump...

Saw the film tonight at the LA Film Festival and really enjoyed it. It provides a history of LA gang culture from a social perspective, then jumps all the way back to slavery. It's not New Jack City or a history of crack. It's the story of a marginalized community right smack in the middle of the American dream machine. Although the stories are bleak and depressing, the film is one of the most positive efforts I've seen in years. Very different from Peralta's previous docs. He even refused to answer skateboarding questions from audience members and brought a lot of the main characters up on stage to take questions from the audience. I hope this doc gets the attention it deserves.

This movie was hands down, excellent. As a history buff, I thoroughly enjoyed learning the history of L.A. The first hand accounts along with the imagery was fantastic. I have read several reviews and noticed that people seem to think something was missing from the movie since it didn't go into as much depth in discussing the mechanics of the gang lifestyle. Well, I think they may have missed the point. As the title suggests, these gangs were MADE in America. And the movie goes to great lengths to illustrate this.

Others were not satisfied because they weren't spoon fed the who, what, when and where of the origins of the gangs. This was done on purpose. If you paid attention to Kumasi, he told you everything you needed to know. When he said : "Part of the mechanics of oppression is to pervert people into becoming instruments of their own oppression." – this was the beginning of the Crips and Bloods. If you don't know anything about Hoover of COINTELPRO, then maybe you won't get it. You have to read between the lines.

How do think they have such powerful guns, what about drugs? I'm no conspiracy theorist but the evidence is outstanding that the Crips and Bloods formed out of an attempt to eradicate a certain community.

This movie should be shown in all schools and parents should show it to their children. Thank you Mr. Peralta and everyone involved in the making of this film.