First Hit: After seeing two films that were dogs, seeing such a full, interesting, insightful, and dynamic film like this one supports my faith in the ability of film to tell a great story.
This film is so real and dynamically interesting that I walked out of the theater thinking; WOW, how amazing to see something this genuine and how brave of them to share their life so fully and intimately. I was in awe.
A good documentary can and will hold the audience’s attention as good or better than any other type of film because it is factual. This film does it in spades. Witnessing Anthony Weiner give amazing speeches as a U.S. Congressmen from New York for the support of 9-11 responders was powerful.
You see that he's a fighter and takes no prisoners in his beliefs. He's got guts and commitment. His weakness is technology and using that technology to send text message pictures of his hardened (covered and uncovered) penis to women. This obsession forces him to quit congress.
After he supposedly went to rehab and got this behavior under control, the film follows him as he runs for mayor of New York City. He takes a lot of heat for his past behavior and he’s harassed at every stop he makes on the campaign trail.
The documentary shoots him, at home, with his wife Huma Abedin (top aide to Hillary Clinton), and their child. Watching Huma go through her feelings and emotions about what her husband did was so difficult and real.
What also made this film work is that Weiner continued to let them film as he was once again he's rightfully accused on continuing his bad-boy behavior of sending explicit text messages and having phone sex (up to 5 times a day) with Sydney Leathers. Allowing the filmmakers to continue to film him as these second accusations became public was astounding.
Just prior to the latest set of admitted transgressions, he was ahead in the polls, but then slid badly to the bottom of the list. All this time the camera continues to roll and we see the dynamic difficulty in his life, Huma’s life, and the lives of all the people who worked for and supported him.
Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg co-directed this documentary and I have to applaud them for being able to keep the film flowing, while we watch Weiner and Abedin deal with his ego, political drive and transgressions. The editing of this film was fantastic.
Overall: This was an amazing story to watch and very revealing about how human character can be amazingly varied and different.