Review: Gleason, 2016, dir. Clay Tweel

gleason

If a person tells you that Gleason, the two hour documentary about Steve Gleason, the erstwhile safety for the New Orleans Saints and the man credited as an icon of the city’s post-Katrina recovery in 2006 thanks to one blocked punt, is inspiring, and if that is the only adjective that a person uses to describe the film, than a person is lying. A person is also lying if a person says that Gleason isn’t inspiring at all. But Gleason, as I dictate in my full piece for Paste Magazine, isn’t “inspiring” so much as it is “honest,” and in its honesty it is “devastating” and even “soul-crushing.” We see shit happen in this movie that we frankly don’t deserve to see. It’s intimate, it’s raw, and it’s great, and you should go see it if you enjoy walking out of movie theaters as an emotional wreck.

Leave a Reply