Search - The Thursday Club: A Film by George Paul Csicsery on DVD

Generation Gap?

meg | santa monica, california | 03/17/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Actually, I found this more interesting than the mystery tale I'd been led to expect. Director and 'sixties war protester Csicsery does indeed start off with a decades-old newspaper photograph of himself and the notion of finding the cop who hit him on the back of the head during a blockade of the Oakland induction center. What he ends up finding is a group of retired Oakland police officers who share with him their stories of decades on the force, and their points of view on the history of the '60s and the Bay Area. Unless you grew up in a family of cops, you won't get a more intimate glimpse of how this American subculture views itself. Most of the men in the documentary were also WWII veterans, so if you're at all interested in hearing the oral testimony of (ahem) the greatest generation, this is worthwhile. Maybe it's not as momentous as veterans from the Allied and Axis powers meeting on common ground, but there is definitely a feeling that both sides of the culture wars of the '60s have mellowed enough to find camaraderie in each other's company.

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