'Dreamcatcher' introduces us to an astonishingly grim world of poverty, drugs, and systematic abusiveness on the hard streets of Chicago; and also to Brenda, a former prostitute, who now devotes her life to trying to save the next generation from ruin. She makes an interesting character: her style of speaking has its similarities to that of evangelical preachers, although she appears completely genuine in her message combining self-forgiveness and practical help. The really shocking thing here is quite how decayed the community is: that stories which you might expect would be aberrations appears to be normal for the girls in this film. Indeed, prostitution is clearly a symptom, but in no way the cause, for a society gone badly wrong, and it's scary how damaged the girls already are before they've even left school. Brenda gives them (and us) some hope, but overall the film, though important and compelling, is fundamentally a depressing one.

This is said to be a documentary about human trafficking, but is it? Like grooming, trafficking is another relatively new buzzword used by opponents of prostitution. Obviously no half-decent person wants to see underage girls becoming ensnared in this vice, and for those at the bottom end of the oldest profession (is there a top end?) it is admirable that activists should attempt to offer them ways out, that much may be said for even the odious Catharine Mackinnon. However, it remains to be seen if the outreach work shown here does much if any good.It is noteworthy that almost all the women who speak herein claim to have been raped or otherwise sexually abused, mostly as children, even a former pimp claims to have been sexually assaulted - he became lovers with his aunt! He saw his father beating up his mother, who stayed rather than walk out on him, so our pimp friend thought it was okay for him to beat his girlfriend."Dreamcatcher" drones on for nearly two hours, that is if you can make it to the end.

I don't know what would constitute a "spoiler" in the case of a documentary like this but just in case... If you read the brief summary and you've previously seen any of the innumerable documentaries about the underbelly of the "American Dream" you won't be very surprised by this one. It features innumerable grotesquely obese black American women (and they're almost all black) talking about being abused from the age of as low as four years old or recounting a life of prostitution and drug addiction. The women running the program - ex prostitutes - are doing the best they can to rescue some of the victims and to prevent children from descending into this hellish lifestyle. It's yet another of the innumerable incarnations of the "anonymous" 12-step programs plus various one-on one educational attempts. There's something fundamentally wrong with the society that this film illuminates and I can't imagine that it will change in any fundamental way no matter what anyone tries to do about the symptoms. The obesity tells us as much as anything else in this film which, overall, illustrates a profoundly ignorant world.