Cinema of frustration

“Crime After Crime”
Produced, Photographed, Edited and Directed: by Yoav Potash
Featuring: Debbie Peagler, Tennille Williams and Joshua Safran
Rating: 3 stars

By Scott Marks | SDUN Film Critic

Movies such as Yoav Potash’s “Crime After Crime” are infuriating in so many ways. What this film has to say about the American justice system will make you want to move to Canada. Had I seen this story—about a woman who spends her life in prison because she tried to break free from an abusive boyfriend in a theatre—I would have ripped the seat in front of me to shreds.

Debbie Peagler was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years-to-life for conspiring to ensure Oliver Wilson, her abusive pimp boyfriend, received the beating of his life. It had been Peagler’s mother who’d first introduced her then 15-year-old daughter to her future abuser, and she’d also arranged for Oliver to get his comeuppance. But Peagler never ratted on her mom.

Oliver tried to force Peagler into a life of prostitution. She returned from her first trick untouched and with no money, so he beat her. Calls to the authorities proved fruitless. To the cops, she was just another dumb ghetto broad with a taste for abusive boyfriends. The beatings escalated and Oliver replaced his fists with a bullwhip.

Peagler did not witness his murder, but she did take part in arranging it. She exited the moment the two hired-goons began to take Oliver apart. The official cause of death was listed as “asphyxia due to or as a consequence of strangulation.” Upon his death, Peagler received a check for $17,000 from a life insurance company. (Most of the money went to pay for Oliver’s elaborate funeral.) The L.A. County D.A.’s office won its case arguing that Peagler had Oliver killed for the insurance money.

It’s not the aim of this review to minimize what Deborah Peagler endured, but damn if I can’t set aside my obsession with visual storytelling long enough to focus solely on the film’s sociological significance.

Cinematically speaking, it’s an endless flow of talking-head interviews. “Crime After Crime” should be found guilty of crimes against cinema.

Filmmaker, and former La Jollan Yotav Potash spent five years documenting Peagler’s life in and out of prison. His first job behind the camera was as a legal videographer taping depositions, and from the look of things, the influence was a tough one to shake.

Were one to assign this documentary a sub-generic heading it would surely be “cinema of frustration.” Not unlike Hitchcock’s gut-wrenching “The Wrong Man,” Peagler’s plight leaves you powerless in your chair. This had as much to do with the triumph of our injustice system as it does the human spirit, and by the time it’s over you’ll find yourself nursing feelings of aggravation compounded by sorrow.

“Crime After Crime” is currently playing at Reading Cinemas Gaslamp 15.