America Undercover: Thug Life In D.C. (1999)

Directed by:

• Marc Levin

movies.nytimes.com
While filmmaker Marc Levin was making his feature-film debut with Slam, he was also completing this documentary which tells a similar tale on far grimmer terms. Thug Life In D.C. tells the harrowing true story of Aundrey Burno, a 17-year-old felon facing up to 115 years in prison on charges of killing a police officer. On one hand Burno is a street-hardened young man who talks of the "thug life" creed that "you gotta do what you gotta do to survive," but at the same time it's hard not to see the fear and despair in his eyes as his case moves along, or in his pleas to his younger brother not to follow the path he's walked. Thug Life In D.C. was produced by Levin for HBO's America Undercover documentary series.