3½ Minutes, Ten Bullets

On November 23, 2012, 45-year old Michael Dunn reprimanded 17-year-old Jordan Davis and his friends about their loud music in a gas station parking lot. The argument escalated, Dunn allegedly felt threatened and fired 10 shots. This story of a white male murdering an African-American teen gave rise to questions. In court, Dunn testified that he saw a weapon during the confrontation. This led to two takes on the shooting: either Dunn acted in self-defense or he was a hotheaded racist. Attempting to uncover the truth, filmmaker Marc Silver intersperses courtroom footage with a plethora of background information representing both parties. An interview with Davis’s parents at their kitchen table alternates with Dunn’s collect calls from prison. 911 recordings from that fateful day serve as the voice-over for footage of the crime scene, including closed-circuit TV footage from the gas station. We even get to watch Dunn’s interrogation. The two versions of what happened increasingly intertwine, resulting in a collage on the huge divide in the United States with regard to gun ownership, vigilantism and racism.