In "The Nine Lives of Marion Barry", directed by Dana Flor and Tony Oppenheimer, the documentary provides views of supporters and opponents of the mayor as well as a timeline of events as to how he rose and fell as a politician. If you don't know who Marion Barry is he was the Mayor of DC for two terms as well as councilman for Ward 8. The documentary begins during the Civil rights movement where Marion Barry had just marched with Martin Luther King. The majority of the documentary shows his time as mayor, and how he eventually got busted by the FBI doing crack cocaine with another woman in a DC hotel. The end of the documentary shows how he was re-elected after being convicted with drug charges and spent many years after being mayor as the councilman for ward 8.
While the documentary did provide a good balance of supporters and non supporters of Barry, what it fails at is providing actual evidence of policies and acts that Barry had put in place to help people of color. One of the reasons the documentary provides as to why voters keep voting him in is because he did lots of things while mayor to help people of color, specifically black people, in the society of DC. But no policies are named or mentioned in the documentary leaving me pondering as to what he did for people of color in the district. If the documentary had said he made companies employ black people or something like that I may have a more favorable view of Barry but instead I'm left with a vague explanation of what he did well.
Something the documentary did well was switching between primary videos of when he was getting elected for mayor as well as his personal cameraman filming him while he ran to become councilman for ward 8. This allowed to provide a view of what Barry is like in his personal life and allows the viewer to escape from the mainstream media which Barry claims is out to get him during the crack cocaine bust because they don't want a black mayor.
Another aspect the documentary lacked was a transition between Marion Barry, the civil rights icon and hero mayor, and Marion Barry, a crook and crack addict. The documentary starts painting him as a hero from the beginning of a civil rights icon. While this is very important information, a few minutes later he is a terrible mayor. There needs to be more of a transition because instead it feels like a major reversal and the viewer is left asking, "Wasn't this guy a hero 10 minutes ago." Something that could help this is showing weaknesses of him while he is a civil rights icon because it would help create a smoother transition into him being a criminal.
In conclusion, the documentary provides the rise of the charismatic and egotistical hero of the city and the downfall of a crack addict making it an overall good film to watch, even with its shortcomings.