Not knowing much more about the Attica Prison Riots than hearing about it through "Dog Day Afternoon" and "Saturday Night Fever", but familiar enough that it was a dark period of history, I chose to start my study of the riots by watching this film. Regardless of whether that method of research was the smartest, I watched "Attica" with an open mind and the realization that TV movies tend to overdramatize and take liberties with historical-based subjects. However, I found little of this in "Attica". The movie seems to take a bold, straight-forward look at the events without muddying it with personal relationships, unnecessary side stories or drawn-out dialogue. There is a sympathy, a compassion and an understanding of both sides of the story for both the prisoners and the negotiators. It swiftly moves from one important scene to the next, addressing the pivotal points that occurred throughout those four days, climaxing on the unavoidably prolonged massacre at the film's conclusion. As a whole, I thought this was a well made, well directed, and a well acted movie, and hope that it has been faithful to the facts.

I think Emma Goldman noted that every civil war is class war. In this instance, that really rings true. One of the characters in the film notes that 60% of the inmates in Attica were black and 0% of the guards were black. As for the higher-ups of Attica, well, I'll pick my guess at the quotas there.The Attica riot was spectacular: the inmates took over and stood their ground for 22 days until riot police massacred a bunch of inmates and, actually, 10 of the hostages.The film deals with the humane aspects of the take-over in a lot of ways. The legal people mainly think the inmates' demands are valid. The governor is slammed by demands from outsiders, seemingly mainly the people and the police unions. The dilemma is plain to see.I really liked the fact that there's very little soundtrack here. The film ended abruptly, but that's due to the real chain of events. Recommendable because of the humanity.

I was an extra in the movie -- the blond guard who was taken hostage.To answer a previous question, the "nude" scene was not at the end of the movie and was shot as we hostages were driven outside (most of us were nude, but not all) into the yard where about 1,000 other extras were supposed to be trying to kill us while other inmates protected us. We called it the gauntlet when we were filming it. It was cold and muddy and we had to shoot it several times. They gave us bed sheets to wrap up in between takes -- but it was more for warmth than modesty as after the first take, we were pretty muddy head to toe from being pushed around a lot in the mud by 100s of people -- there were about 35 of us playing hostages. We hostages were paid three or four times the regular daily pay for that day and I remember a lot of the movie's big shots had their wives and/or girl friends on the set that day, too.The scene was included in the European release of the movie. I have copies of both.The end was more about the state police just shooting at the inmates sort of randomly and depicting the fact that since many of the police were shooting shotguns, many of the dead and wounded hostages were shot by the police, not inmates.It was hard work... long, long days inside a hospital for the criminally insane... and long stretches of nothing at all to do, as well... lots of hurry up and wait.The movie won a few big awards -- Chomski had just finished Holocaust previous to this movie and was sort of riding that success -- ABC Circle films, I believe.

I found this movie floating around on True Movies one afternoon and thought the film sounded interesting i.e. criminals vs cops.The acting was average and nothing special came from anyone including Morgan Freedman. I had to admit I've never seen Freedman looking as young as he did in that movie.The soundtracks were passable to accompany the dangerous moments and the ending. Could of been better.The script could of done with some, "dramatization". It wouldn't of hurt the film to add some more speeches, some little action moments between the criminals and cops. I understand its a true movie and it is trying to reflect the moment of September the 9th 1971, but thats what I think anyway.I have to say I was surprised to see how the ending was. I could not believe the U.S would be as ruthless and dangerous as to line up the guards and start shooting anyone who is not on the floor with their hands behind their back.Good movie with a sad ending.