Instead of concentrating on the history of the case, which many people are already familiar with from a very wide variety of media and methods, this film focuses on what Abu-Jamal has done with his life and his celebrity over the last three decades--books he's written, commentaries he's sent out from behind bars, and the writers, artists, Nobel laureates, academics, other prisoners, ordinary folks that he's influenced. The use of a mix of compelling talking heads (Cornel West especially!), dramatized scenes with an actor portraying Abu-Jamal in his Lilliputian cell, Abu-Jamal himself in early interviews, a sketch of some of the factors that prompted the forces of the state, ah, the Commonwealth, of Pennsylvania to target him in the first place make the documentary lively, and the "coda" at the end--"Manufacturing Guilt"--made the story more comprehensible to those friends I urged to see the film, friends who knew less about his actual case. Many books have been written about the man, but this film covered a lot of territory in a short space.
