One of my all time favorites.

It is a performances centric movie

Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

This documentary showed you an insight into a subject that is not normally covered by mainstream television. I believe that this documentary shows you a true insight into the life's of people addicted to crack and it's effects. This documentary is fantastic and I believe that is shows the true side to addiction and why people must avoide it.

I swear I used to see some of those characters walking by my store on Church street in the early nineties when this film was made. ... How the heck did the filmmakers get all the people on the film to agree to being followed around like that is what I want to know. Lance Loud on steroids, indeed! Real reality-TV! ... Sadly, there are probably STILL a lot of poor people in Lowell living this kind of debauched lifestyle - degenerate, disgusting, delinquent, deranged, and despaired! So, so sad. ... I remember when this film was going to come out, some of the politicians in City Hall were speaking out against it, saying it painted a poor picture of Lowell. ... Well, it does - accurately. It paints a picture of the POOR people of Lowell and how some of them live lives of crime and hopelessness. Really troubling footage. ... How many times do you need to show someone smoking crack out of a plastic soda bottle bong with tin foil to get the point across? I guess this many! ... The scenes of Lowell are spooky when you think that I used to walk those very streets in the acre and Pawtucketville and Centerville growing up as a kid. "But those were different times," as Lou Reed says. ... The camera doesn't lie!... To be fair, they are only showing the seedy side of Lowell, and the lives of the down and out. Also, they do not focus on rich people who get high, or on the middle and upper middle class people - or the artistic and bohemian people who dabbled in it and got out. Some of those people used to come into my store for help to build their immune systems back up, their fried brains back up, and their strength back up. A lot of these street people would come to me trying to get clean, or to get help dealing with AIDS, and I would do what I could. I never sold them a million pills to rip them off and take advantage of their trust in me. I could have made a killing. I know people who did. It's all very sad. ... Also, I should mention that the Sister Willie from Catholic Charities shown in the film is the very person who helped me - even city council members and the chief of police could not help me. There was a crack house on Lawrence street across from my store. They had broken into my store twice, stole my cash at night, stole cars, broke my car window, my dad's car window, other customers car windows. stole tape decks out of cars, the usual. One day, I found a bullet hole though my store window. ... Sister Willie walked in one day with a nun suit on and asked why I looked troubled. I explained to her that my business was failing because people were afraid to park their cars to shop at my store. I told her it was people from the crack house right next to Catholic Charities. "What house is it?" she simply asked. I took her outside and pointed it out, and she said it, "I'll take care of this. I'll speak to the cardinal today." ... I swear, within ONE WEEK there were FBI, DEA, and VICE SQUAD cops swarming all over the place. It was a HUGE bust. No one ever broke into my store or cars or stole anything ever again. ... I realize that there are, indeed, legitimate reasons why people end up abusing drugs - even hard drugs - but, let's face it, if you're a healthy person, you've got to be pretty stupid or foolish to end up taking stuff like coke, crack, heroin, crystal m., PCP, angel dust, etc. just out of boredom or to have fun. It's no fun. It ruins your life. On the bright side, I've also also watched another DVD that shows a whole different story on the matter. I highly recommend it - WAITING TO INHALE. ... YOWZA! - George Koumantzelis / The Aeolian Kid

I love this doc...HBO made some awesome docs at one point under the moniker of America Undercover. These days they don't make too much of anything it seems. There seems to be a short-supply of good doc ideas. I am all about Hookers and Crackheads and serial killers.Come-on get fine in 2009...bring back these kind of documentaries...I need to live vicariously through these crack-heads. I can't quit my job and start smoking crack like I was Janet from another planet (remember that lovely lady from this doc).This doc has everything you could possibly need a doc on crack addiction to have. Its got ex-fighters! Its got crack addicts trying to hold down jobs! Its got crack addicts losing jobs and losing loves!Yes was a piece showing my love for "Crack Street" and also a piece about why HBO needs to come up with more docs.

While the other commenter got it right about this being a great documentary, I am almost insulted by the way he is so flippant about this film. This is one of the most, in fact THE most emotion-wrecking, harrowing, saddening documentary I have ever watched. In my earlier days I used to move around places, living on the road, playing guitar etc. This lifestyle brought me into areas and situations not unlike the main premise of this film: In and around 'druggies' and living on the lowest rung of the ladder. I saw so many things, met so many people from freaks to weirdos to the worst drug addled morons you could imagine and yet, this film brought the true reality of the situation to me as if for the first time. It opens your eyes to what it is truly like for the individuals that have ended up being 'those druggies' that everyone knows of or might even have known at some point in their life. I was shocked that it affected me, after all I have seen and places I've slept, etc...yet I had -as I suspect most people do- just glossed over it and never really noticed the disintegration of the human condition as is presented to the viewer of this film. At the start you are not concerned for these people. You have the usual blinkers on and will most likely look at them with a sneer whilst considering switching the film off and doing something more worthwhile. Then, keep watching of course, you are taken in by the subtle and blatant situations and conversations of these three addicts. the pain and screams behind their eyes is regularly apparent throughout. You empathise at times. You get angry at them too. In effect, this film is so powerful because you become so involved that you really do care for these people by the end. You want them to clean up. You want them to do well. I would never laugh at this movie or describe it as a train wreck. I wouldn't want to watch such 'heavy' stuff very often either but I think it is good to be made aware of someone else's reality, especially if it is as common and cursed as the crack problems of the world. It wouldn't harm you to take a real look at it and see how stripped of everything a human can become - by their own making. It is profound. If ever there was a way of showing kids that taking (certain) drugs can do them untold harm, this movie is it. I wouldn't recommend showing it to young kids but, if my kid ever was suspected of taking any drugs (higher than weed I mean) then I wouldn't hesitate in showing him this movie. In fact I think I WILL show it when he is about 12 or 13.This is a simple documentary with a basic camera following subject approach with the odd questioning from the cameraman/woman. It is probably the best documentary you will ever watch. Unmissable.