72
Metascore
13 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 98TheWrapLex BriscusoTheWrapLex BriscusoThe film is utterly singular to American design—as is the policing system in question—and a masterclass in effective documentary work that exists solely to deliver an impalpable truth.
- 90The Hollywood ReporterJourdain SearlesThe Hollywood ReporterJourdain SearlesPower exposes the myth of good policing for what it is: one of the most expensive and calculated PR campaigns in history. And by extension, the film dismantles the idea of America as the land of the free, emphasizing that freedom only belongs to those with enough power and social capital to avoid the oppressive boot of law enforcement.
- 80Los Angeles TimesRobert AbeleLos Angeles TimesRobert AbelePower could just as easily have benefited from the docuseries treatment, although at under 90 minutes, it lands plenty of hard truths and harder questions.
- 75IndieWireDavid EhrlichIndieWireDavid EhrlichPower achieves a profoundly unsettling sweep by prioritizing breadth over depth, and Ford’s doc is able to cover a ton of ground as it hopscotches between chapter titles like “PROPERTY” and “STATUS QUO” in order to argue that policing has always served as an instrument to maintain class order.
- 75Slant MagazineGreg NussenSlant MagazineGreg NussenThroughout Power, Yance Ford draws a startlingly clear line from the origins of modern policing as a slave patrol to its present-day iteration.
- 70The New York TimesAlissa WilkinsonThe New York TimesAlissa WilkinsonThe point isn’t the data, but the spider-web nature of the argument; seemingly disparate things (labor strikes, slave patrols, the removal of Indigenous Americans from their land) are drawn together in “Power,” which becomes an act of pattern recognition. It is not easy viewing, but it’s a strong introduction to a topic that seems freshly relevant every day.
- 60The GuardianAdrian HortonThe GuardianAdrian HortonThe film makes cogent, sweeping sense of the record for perhaps the most illuminative, swift and damning case against the institution of policing – the real fourth estate, as one subject puts it – of the many investigations conducted in the wake of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. But there’s a dryness to its procedure.
- 60VarietySiddhant AdlakhaVarietySiddhant AdlakhaAnyone watching the film is likely to learn something, though whether its lessons will stick, or claw their way beneath one’s skin, is less likely.
- 58The PlaylistChristian GallichioThe PlaylistChristian GallichioThe film, then, is a useful primer for historicizing and contextualizing the relationship between methods of social control and the rise of policing, both as an unchecked institution and a term associated with the history of the United States. One just wishes the film would slow down every once in a while.