Punishment Park

...the policy issues raised remain chillingly relevant.

Twenty-five years on, Peter Watkins's dystopian nightmare still grips, imagining hippies and radicals getting tortured for quasi-judicial sport by the National Guard, licensed by internal security tribunals convened by the US senate.

What's curious is how a 1970s allegorical fable about authority and dissent that plays against the backdrop of the Nixon administration's escalation of the Vietnam War still feels strong, provocative, and necessary.

At times this is a powerful film, serving as a sort of allegory for the American involvement in Vietnam.