Told from the mouths of the people who were there, the story in Hold Your Fire comes to life through some of the most descriptive eye-witness commentators that I have had the pleasure of viewing. Directed by Stefan Forbes, this documentary focuses on the event that helped to change law enforcement forever, covering the fateful and unintentional 1973 hostage situation of a Brooklyn sporting goods store by 4 young black men. It wasn’t a narrative film, but Hold Your Fire felt every bit as dramatic, thrilling, and action-packed as any movie one would find opening in a theater on a Friday night.

As one commentator facetiously quips, America is built on violence, a character aspect that bleeds, both figuratively and literally, into law enforcement. A little known fact about the United States police system is that its origins in the south date back to slave patrols, and it owes its subsequent expansion majorly to the post-Civil War idea that there would be a necessity to keep newly freed persons in check with Black Codes and Jim Crow laws. A history of violence flowed freely until it hit the wall that was the Civil Rights Movement, which forced those tensions to climb higher and higher and displace into neighborhoods such as boroughs where the story of Hold Your Fire takes place.

Four working men — Shuaib Raheem, Dawud Rahman, Yusef Almussadiq, and Salih Abdullah — struggling to get by financially and socially with the growing discrimination they faced as Muslim and Black men, decide to rob Al’s Sporting Goods of its guns. However, soon after initiating the robbery, the group found themselves backed into a corner when the weight of the local police department dropped down on them. Though Mr. Raheem claims that they wished to surrender immediately, an atmosphere of understandable mistrust on both sides escalated into a bloody standoff. With police distrustful of every African American as potential members of the radical anti-police sects at the time, and the African American men distrustful of the police due to the long and violent history of policing in America, the situation dragged on, until a voice of reason stepped in and changed everything.

Commentators offered a mix of information that was used to paint a vivid picture of both the sporting goods store as well as the contentious atmosphere of New York in the early 1970s. Society was collectively reeling from the bloody Atticus prison riots in 1971, the messy Dog Day Afternoon bank robbery, and the 1972 Munich Olympics. At the time, the policy for hostage negotiations was to go in with force after a set period of time of no surrender, until NYPD Cop Psychologist Harvey Schlossberg, Ph.D., described as a “pantywaist” among other names by the police commentators on this film, instilled smart policies that hostage negotiators such as Benjamin Ward used to combat the growing violence in this situation and speak with the robbers on a human level. Another cop remarks in the film that “If you shoot a cop, they’re going to get you,” and so negotiating with criminals seemed blasphemous and sinful as a cop, but Schlossberg’s teachings soon replaced the previously careless and violent techniques and has since saved many lives of both citizens and police officers.

Stefan Forbes’ documentary Hold Your Fire had twists and turns, he said and she said debates, historical background overviews, and so much more. The file footage was hardly even needed as the interviewees went into great detail describing minute details of the setting, events, and the characters that played a part in this story. The music, composed by Jonathan Sanford, was both beautiful and creepy, using stringed instruments in a similar manner found in horror movies with high pitches that cause anxiety and increase tension in the film, playing into the underlying theme of there being fear on both sides. Hold Your Fire offers an intense conversation about police and race relations, with commentators ping-ponging topics of racism and policing back and forth, audiences may just get whiplash when the movie is released by IFC to theaters on May 20th, 2022.

7.5 out of 10