Liberal Film Bashes Rudy Giuliani

As a 2008 presidential bid by Rudy Giuliani looks increasing likely, liberal media groups are lining up to take pot shots at the popular Republican.

The first major attack comes from a new documentary that seeks to debunk former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani as "America's Mayor" - and has opened in Manhattan. Even its director admits the film is anything but fair and balanced.

"I'm not claiming there's anything approaching objectivity in this film," director Kevin Keating says about "Giuliani Time," which is playing in one Big Apple theater.

Publicity materials for the film say it is "certain to bust open the myth of Giuliani" as America's Mayor that developed after 9/11 and reveal his inner "totalitarian" impulses.

But a review in the City Journal calls it a "silly documentary" that "tries - and fails - to tar the record of America's Mayor."

Writing in the Journal, Charles Upton Sahm notes that the movie's main indictment charges Giuliani with ushering in police tactics that led to widespread brutality against minorities.

The film delves into the tragic death of Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo, who in 1999 was gunned down in a hail of 41 bullets by four detectives who mistakenly thought the innocent Diallo had drawn a gun - an act the movie suggests was an intentional racist outrage.

But the film fails to point out that complaints of police brutality and incidents of police shooting declined dramatically during the Giuliani administration, Sahm discloses.

Keating's documentary tries to portray the dramatic drop in the crime rate in New York during Giuliani's tenure - including a 70 percent reduction in murder - as merely part of a nationwide trend.

"But crime in New York fell farther and faster than crime nationwide, and continues to drop while many other cities have experienced a reversal," Sahm writes.

"Giuliani Time" also attacks his "mean-spirited" welfare policies - which in fact led 650,000 people from a life of dependency to gainful employment.

Even more outrageously, the movie gives screen time to a local reporter who discusses Giuliani's father's possible links to organized crime - while acknowledging that as U.S. attorney and later as mayor, "almost no one in history has done more to combat the Mafia than Giuliani," the City Journal article states.

As NewsMax disclosed before the movie opened, some analysts think its criticisms of Giuliani might actually help him among Republicans - many of whom are skeptical of his moderate views on abortion, gay rights and gun control - by demonstrating that he's not a liberal.

And Sahm concludes: "New Yorkers know the real story of the Giuliani era; it's all around them every time they walk out their front door. And no left-wing documentary will convince them otherwise, especially one as silly and patently ideological as this."