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Giuliani Time

Behind the Music-style chronicling of the former mayor's career

By MATT ASHARE | June 7, 2006

3.5 Stars

Rudolph Giuliani post-9/11

A product of the law-and-order, anti-immigration, welfare-busting Reagan regime, two-term New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani came to power promising lower crime when rates across the country were already in decline, especially in NYC, where David Dinkins had strengthened the police force. With a smile and a sweaty forehead, he embarked on a mean-spirited mission to clean up the city and change welfare to workfare, taking credit for a financial boom that was nationwide. Kevin Keating’s balanced yet blistering documentary — which takes its name from a rallying cry used by the cops who brutalized Abner Louima with a toilet plunger — casts the trajectory of his subject’s career in a format familiar to any student of Behind the Music: meteoric rise; NYC coverboy; inevitable fall from grace in the midst of a Senate race against Hilary Clinton; redemption courtesy of 9/11, when Bush retreated to God knows where and Giuliani arrived at Ground Zero to reassure country and world. And Bob Seger would remind him he can always come back, ’cause politics, like rock and roll, never forgets.

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