Stonewall (2015), available on Paramount+ and directed by Roland Emmerich, is hardly Stonewall at all. It isn’t even a dramatized documentary (which would’ve been way better!), complete with mostly fictional characters and a completely fictional retelling of what really happened at the Stonewall riots. At least the main character, white twink boy, or Danny Winters, is cute. Most of the story focuses on Danny Winters; his family kicks him out, so he goes to find some queer friends and stuff, some of which are gay prostitutes out on the streets because that’s just how life is for young queers back then if you’re not rich with an accepting family.
Then, we finally get to the Stonewall Riots, in which our angry cute white twink starts with the throw of a brick. Meanwhile, the police (at least, the group of men under Deputy Seymour Pine) wasn’t really just raiding Stonewall for nothing, but trying to arrest the manager, Ed Murphy of the Stonewall Inn. In the film he’s also the ringleader of the whole gay prostitution human trafficking thing that goes on in the movie. The portrayal of the police doing an undercover operation at Stonewall to help the queer community is laughable. Now, these are only two characters that are real, the deputy, Pine, who claimed he that’s all he wanted to do at Stonewall, and Ed Murphy.
I watched this movie so you don’t have to; I regret my time watching it, so don’t waste yours!
