At the Ready movie review & film summary (2021)

Crow’s camera captures the nuance of what these teens face and how law enforcement instructors and recruiters sell children on the idea of following in their footsteps. The program, which has been in place since 2009, includes a recruitment video promoting its fraternity of graduates now in law enforcement. An instructor follows up the presentation with the promise that her students will never be alone because of this network. Other instructors appeal to the kid’s sense of loyalty to their families and their communities. Students carry backpacks and hand decorated notebooks celebrating the police or Border Patrol. 

“At the Ready” observes other background details, like what these kids are missing out on by not being a part of the general student population or the Thin Blue Line flag that hangs over their classroom, to explain the environment where these classes take place. Salaries are discussed both at home and in the classroom. For many students with immigrant parents, the career path to a steady job with a steady income is part of the American Dream. It’s a source of pride for their parents, and it becomes a means to help take care of their families right after high school. But for some of these students dealing with guilt, insecurity and doubt, these intensive courses become a nightmare. The students question themselves when other Latinos call them racists or traitors. The instructors plainly tell the camera they keep some of the real unpleasantries of their jobs away from the kids, like the scarier life-threatening situations or the personal toll a law enforcement career takes, yet they encourage their students to pursue these tough careers because it’s how they moved up in life. It’s a cyclical pattern that has spread in the years since the documentary was filmed. 

El Paso sits just across the border from Ciudad Juárez. Many of the film’s main subjects travel over to the other side to see their families. For them, the issue of immigration and militarization hits painfully close to home, even as recruiters pitch them as assets to any law enforcement branch they join. “At the Ready” explores those tensions through a sympathetic lens, going over the many reasons that would convince young, caring students to learn how to arrest and subdue perceived bad guys and how the previous generation of law enforcement recruits to replenish its ranks. It’s a pipeline not unlike that of the military or a gang, starting with engaging kids’ interests, before they’re old enough to vote or drink, with the promise of work and a decent pay-off. That concept is scarier than watching teenagers bob and weave around their school practicing how to confront an armed suspect, and just as jarring. 

Now playing in theaters and available on demand.

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