Street Fight, a documentary about Corey Booker’s first mayoral campaign in Newark, is gripping, raw and full of can’t-believe-they-got-that-on-tape moments. Made for television, it’s a bit short and certainly biased but it’s also as dramatic as fiction. You could splice it with scenes from The Wire and not a miss a beat.
Towards the end of the movie, as candidate Booker is canvassing from house to house, a small group of kids tags along, giddy at meeting a celebrity – or, at least, an adult who plays along. A girl, maybe seven, tells the camera: “I’m not going to wash my hand.” The filmmaker asks her why and she replies that she shook Booker’s hand and doesn’t want to wash off the smell. The filmmaker asks what Booker smells like and the girl answers: “The future.”