Butler's Cinema Scene

ACLU attorney Dale Ho before the U.S. Supreme Court

“THE FIGHT” My rating: B+ 

96 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

The cynic in me acknowledges that the new documentary “The Fight” comes awfully close to being a recruiting ad for the American Civil Liberties Union.

Except that this effort from co-directors Eli B. Despres, Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg is a hugely engrossing, intellectually stimulating achievement that will leave viewers torn between hope and despair.

“The Fight” follows the efforts of the ACLU to battle four of the more draconian steps taken by the new Trump administration.

We see ACLU lawyer Dale Ho take on Trump’s order that the 2020 census contain a question about the respondents’ citizenship…a development that would undoubtedly keep non-citizens from participating and so skew the numbers that determine, among other things, how many representatives each state gets in the U.S. House.

Brigitte Amiri, a litigator for women’s rights, takes on the plight of a 17-year-old woman who, having been detained as an illegal alien, discovered she was pregnant and was denied the abortion she requested.

Lee Gelernt tackles the issue of child separation along the Border.

Joshua Block builds a case against the banning of transgender persons from the military. He’s assisted by young attorney Chase Strangio, who is himself transgender.

The common thread in all of these cases, as well as with Trump’s notorious Muslim ban, is the suppression of human rights for certain classes of people.

What makes the film so compelling is the dramatic way in which the filmmakers capture the process of building a case (sometimes virtually overnight) while allowing the ACLU lawyers to emerge as fully-developed individuals with families (whom they often rarely see), insecurities, fears and qualms.

Indeed, these civil rights warriors come off as precisely the opposite of the popular image of a litigator as a swaggering courtroom paladin. We see Ho using a hotel room mirror to rehearse his upcoming argument before the Supreme Court. He’s so nervous he keeps flubbing his delivery.

Bridget Amiri

And yet the stakes are tremendously high. Amiri describes the effort to obtain an abortion for an ICE detainee (her argument is that the right to abortion applies to every woman in the U.S., including prisoners), as “a canary in the coal mine” moment. She fears that if she loses this case, Roe v. Wade might just collapse.

The film builds much power by alternating between the efforts of the ACLU lawyers and President Trump’s hate-spewing (there’s really no other way to describe it) rallies.

Moreover, the filmmakers often turn their cameras on the individuals — like a veteran transgender Navy petty officer, or immigrant parents separated from their children — who serve as plaintiffs in ACLU cases.  This approach humanizes these individuals, even as Trump seems hell-bent on demonizing them.

Occasionally the filmmakers look back to examine major ACLU victories…as well as the controversy surrounding its efforts to ensure equal rights for neo-Nazis and others.  (An entire documentary could be made just about lefty lawyers who on principle represent people whose ideas they find abhorrent.)

There’s a bit of comic relief when we’re given a walk-through tour of the ACLU’s New York offices, which smack more of the college dorm than the corporate board room (it appears to be a tattoo-friendly environment).  The lawyers also share a sampling of the hate mail they routinely receive.

The ACLUers don’t win every case they take on…in at least one instance they fight the administration to a draw (Trump decides to keep transgender soldiers and sailors already in uniform  but to deny admittance to additional numbers).

But over the course of its 90 minutes “The Fight” becomes a full-bore blood boiler.

| Robert W. Butler