Ray Pride

Marshall Curry's scrappy Academy Award-nominated documentary, "Street Fight," got booked at the last minute for a Chicago showing over Oscar weekend, and its ground-level virtues make for compelling viewing, as a race between a four-term incumbent and a 32-year-old challenger for the mayoralty of Newark, New Jersey unfolds. It's like the breathtaking Spike Lee movie we've all been waiting for to follow up "Do the Right Thing," but it's real. As American political documentaries go, this brisk, suspenseful portrayal of dirty deeds played by machine politics against an earnest reformer is one of the finest in memory. It's an anger-provoking jaw-dropper, the kind of all-American narrative we're seeing more of, but never enough of. Curry's future is sturdy, but what he has on offer right now is a marvel. 83m.

"Street Fight" plays Friday-Tuesday at the Gallery Theater, 1112 North Milwaukee, (773)486-9612.

(2006-02-28)

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