Gangland: The Final Season Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		3.5

Gangland: The Final Season Blu-ray Movie Review

Does this final season of 'Gangland' go out with a bang?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman February 17, 2011

There’s perhaps a certain comfort when watching Gangland in coming to the inevitable conclusion that it probably doesn’t matter what your ethnic background or socioeconomic status may be, chances are you will either know or actually be related to someone who’s been in a gang. If the 1950’s saw the rise of public awareness about the now quaint idea of juvenile delinquency, the radicalized 1960’s and 1970’s saw the rise of actual gangs penetrating the urban wasteland of America’s inner cities. By the 1980’s and 1990’s the problem had become so rampant that most major cities had their own Gang Enforcement police units. And yet the problem, if anything, has only gotten worse in the ensuing decades. If Gangland has been one of the more viscerally frightening series on the History Channel, it really has never completely attempted to answer the huge lingering question of why this activity continues to spread and grow. Conclusions are hinted at, as we get to see the raw and brutal world in which a lot of these gang members were raised, but then there are others, sometimes those who have gone into gang “remediation” themselves, who have been raised in those very same conditions and yet have managed to escape the clutches of a lifestyle that frequently ends either in death or lifelong incarceration. Are there answers? Perhaps none that easily fit within the confines of a recurring series like Gangland, a show that flirts with sensationalism more than little, but which nonetheless delivers some pretty gut wrenching punches along the way.

Gangland is one of the first “niche” History series to announce its own demise, and this seventh season has been proclaimed to be the last. Does that mean the series has exhausted all the nooks and crannies of American gang life? Probably not, as the series itself makes frighteningly clear. The gang problem is widespread and dangerously diverse. Everything from White Supremacists to Black Power advocates dot the world of gangs, and virtually every ethnic subset imaginable finds comfort in gathering together. More often than not, these ethnic subsets have staked out their own geographic territory, and they do not take kindly to anyone else honing in on their turf. Time and time again Gangland portrays an onslaught of death and destruction simply because someone “who doesn’t belong” had the temerity to venture sometime as little as a block in the wrong direction.

What Gangland has shown all to clearly over its seven year span is that no geographic territory is immune from the incursion of gang activity. My very own hometown, Portland, Oregon, was profiled in the previous season of Gangland. Portland is often seen as the last refuge of the counterculture class (hence the semi-hilarious new IFC series Portlandia), but casual observers of the culture here would probably not guess that the city is also a simmering hotbed of several kinds of distasteful gang activity. The seventh season of Gangland travels far and wide portraying a really startling variety of gang activity spread across the far reaches of the United States. From the mountainous grandeur of Denver to the sandy beaches of San Diego to Portland’s northern sibling Seattle to the jewel of the south, Atlanta, no area is free of gangs.

What may be disturbing to those bearing certain ethnic sensitivities is this season’s seeming emphasis on Hispanic and Latino gangs. By far the majority of the seventh year’s 15 episodes deal with Hispanic gangs in various cities, and many of the first person confessionals come from Latinos either in gangs currently or having broken free from them. There doesn’t seem to be any outright unfair focus in any of these episodes, but watching them en masse as I did for this review, it becomes apparent just how often this season hones in on this particular ethnicity. (Another thing that becomes apparent, albeit much less troublingly if no less annoyingly, when watching this series all in one sitting is how every return from a commercial break begins with the portentous tones of the narrator announcing the locale we already know we’re in. How many times does one have to hear “Denver. . .Denver. . .Denver” to figure out we’re in the Mile High city?)

Probably the most interesting episode of this season is the 75th episode, which evidently aired first, but which shows up here as the third episode on Disc One of this three disc set. Entitled Most Notorious, this “very special” episode features the guest participation of Snoop Dogg and Ice-T, both not exactly your typical former gang members, and, due to their success, probably seen as “wannabe”’s by actual current gang members. Nonetheless, they bring a nice element to this episode, which is sort of a typical countdown enterprise to the most notorious gang member featured in the show’s history, in this case “Boone,” the former Detroit gangster (real name Nate Craft) who turned informant and has participated in several Gangland episodes in one form or another.

Gangland tells us that there are currently well over one million gang members nationwide. That’s an eye opening statistic and proves that the show certainly could have gone on for some time, at least in terms of profiling individuals if not groups. It’s probably best that the series come to a close, however, as, though viscerally compelling at times, it never really tried to explore the socioeconomic backstories of why these often very young kids got involved in the gang lifestyle to begin with. It’s perhaps enough to simply be aware of a problem, and Gangland does often exemplary work in detailing the gang issue across the United States, but if one doesn’t try to root out the causes, the symptoms can never be properly addressed. Maybe that can become fodder for a new History series.

This 3 BD set includes the following episodes:

Mile High Killers
Public Enemy Number One
Most Notorious
Vendetta of Blood
A Killer's Revenge
Wild Boyz
Better off Dead
Capitol Killers
Clash of the Crips
Army of Hate
The Filthy Few
Shoot to Kill
Road Warriors
Valley of Death
Death Before Dishonor

Gangland: The Final Season Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Gangland: The Final Season's AVC encoded 1080i transfer in 1.78:1 is occasionally problematic, as every season of this show has been. While interview segments and even some of the location footage pops nicely, with excellent fine detail, and rich, well saturated colors, the show can't completely escape from its use of stock footage, often of much shoddier quality than the bulk of the series, as well as persistent combing artifacts that accompany the interlaced presentation. A lot of the dark, nighttime footage is also hampered by low contrast and often ugly post-processing which emphasizes grain and makes everything muddy, murky and often indistinguishable. This isn't a horrible presentation by any means, but it lacks the clarity and precision of the best high-def television Blu-rays we've been getting regularly from any number of labels.

Gangland: The Final Season Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Gangland: The Final Season is presented with an extremely robust lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mix that pumps up the low end with an unending supply of hip hop beats and other bass-heavy underscore. This is a typically relentless soundtrack from History, which seems to prefer amped up mixes for many of its documentary series. Narration, as ridiculously hyperbolic as it tends to be, as well as on screen confessionals, are all presented front and center with extremely acute fidelity and a problem free range of frequencies. This series also of course features a lot of noisy sound effects, typically gun fire and the like, and those all ring out with sometimes startling force.

Gangland: The Final Season Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No supplements are offered on this 3 BD set.

Gangland: The Final Season Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Gangland is probably too surface deep to ever be anything other than a passingly disturbing document of how bad the gang situation is in the United States. It's actually a fine series as far as it goes, but more discerning viewers will probably keep asking "Why?" as they watch one city after another overrun with gang activity. This season has the usual assortment of locations and gang members, though it strangely emphasizes the Hispanic side of things, which may strike some viewers as lopsided. If you're a fan of the series, you'll probably find enough here to sustain interest, though it's probably a good thing this series has decided to call it quits after seven seasons.