Review of Stonewall (2015) by Greg H — 02 Oct 2015

Stonewall, from Independence Day and White House Down director Roland Emmerich, is not just bad. It's offensive. Emmerich takes a seminal moment in the history of the gay civil rights movement and reduces it to a by-the-numbers coming-of-age story we've seen a thousand times, while reducing the kind of people who were actually central to the events of Stonewall as background players.

The 1960's for gay and lesbian Americans was a time when just being gay could get you arrested, especially if you were caught in gay bars frequently raided by the police. Stonewall was just such a place, and one night, the people there decided they weren't gonna take it anymore.

A brick was thrown. A riot ensued. A movement was born. Not that you'd really have any understanding of that from this swill. Jeremy Irvine (War Horse) is the white-boy of all our dreams as an Indiana-bred gay boy serving as the audience stand-in.

It's a complete cop-out. Emmerich has never met a cliche he didn't like and nearly all of the actors are underserved by a terrible script from Jon Robin Baitz. We all deserve better.