99%: The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film

The variety of physical perspectives lends a vivid you-are-there aspect to this record of the Zuccotti Park protest in New York in 2011.

What is shocking is seeing the aggressive and malicious response to the movement.

This gripping, innovatively constructed flashback commands attention.

Until someone delivers the definitive 360-degree chronicle on the populist uprising, this collection of dispatches from the front is the best primer you could hope for.

The visual images are manipulative and simplistic; like the verbal ranting, they are devoid of depth.

Ultimately, the filmmakers are more interested in congratulating Occupy for taking a stand than in shedding light on its fascinating infrastructure and backstory, as though a protest’s existence automatically spells victory for its cause.

A documentary as messy as the movement it tries to portray, 99%: The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film possesses energy, passion and about a dozen documentaries inside it yearning to breathe free.