O.J.: Made in America

2016 Directed by Ezra Edelman

A chronicle of the rise and fall of O.J. Simpson, whose high-profile murder trial exposed the extent of American racial tensions, revealing a fractured and divided nation.

O.J. Simpson Marcia Clark Robert Kardashian Peter Hyams David Zucker Gil Garcetti Francis Lee Bailey

Alternative Titles

O.J.: 메이드 인 아메리카, OJ : Made in America

crime documentary

467 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by Sean Gilman ★★★★ 14

Can't believe you all gave five stars to a documentary that crops and zooms archival 1.33 footage to fit a 16x9 TV screen.
Review by nathaxnne 21

In 1994 I had a semester-long freakout that culminated in me catastrophically trashing my dorm room and laying in the college commons area face down for days on end wailing and shrieking and flipping out. It was a bad scene. I was too crazy to stay with my mother, so after being there for a while I decided to drive to New Jersey from Florida. Florida is long and if you start from near the bottom but not quite the bottom it might take you 9 or 10 hours to get to Jacksonville. A not-crazy college student might decide to rest then but I was like hey! it is the middle of the night and I am totally insane. I…
Review by SilentDawn ★★★★★ 17

100/100
An astonishing American tragedy refracted through a larger portrait of race relations, celebrity, and the winding glamour of Los Angeles; Ezra Edelman's documentary, entitled O.J.: Made in America, leaves no stone unturned, creating a barrage of mini masterworks as O.J. Simpson's story continues to intertwine with societal turmoil and the very ideal of the American Dream. Exhaustive in every sense of the word, the film - 7.5 hours of archival images, brand new footage, and stunning interviews - churns out delicate, honest, eerie, and detailed information at a rapid pace, acknowledging little moments of quirks and cosmic irony which give the entire experience a scintillating edge.
Its opening chapters begin with O.J.'s star persona and the American public's early…
Review by matt lynch ★★★★½

What a cagerattler, a fearless micro/macro document. Put it in the Smithsonian next to WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE.
Review by Mike D'Angelo ★★★½ 8

67/100
Passes my stringent "Would I rather be reading a book on this subject?" test, as 7.5 hours allows for roughly equivalent thoroughness. It still omits details that a book would surely address—given Edelman's thesis, I was kind of stunned that he makes no mention, for example, of Time deliberately darkening Simpson's mug shot on its cover, which was a major media scandal back then. But said thesis is gratifyingly provocative and artfully constructed, making a persuasive case that Simpson was acquitted both because he was black and because he was (effectively, symbolically) white. Edelman heroically resists any temptation to editorialize, not even pausing to let the casual racism sink in when one interview subject—speaking today, incredibly, not in archival…
Review by josh lewis ★★★★★ 1

a deconstruction of the rise and fall of OJ as a means of ruminating on the images we build of ourselves, our relationship with those images (our own and each other's) and the way we, collectively, inform and latch onto them. a total triumph of longform filmmaking and journalism.
Review by Nathan Rabin ★★★★★ 1

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

Quite good. Also, O.J did it.
Review by russman ★★★★ 6

Well, living in Buffalo for that long does things to people
Review by <Todd> ★★★★★

"I'm not black... I'm OJ" - O.J. Simpson (attributed),
Juror #9 is not messing around.
This is really great. In fact it might be the best true crime documentary I've ever watched. The honesty in some of these interviews is astonishing and the editing and storytelling is fantastic. Framing the OJ trial through the history of race relations in the 20th century is not new but Edelman's approach to that frame is the best that's ever been done on this particular topic.
The OJ Simpson trial is one of the biggest media events of the last 50 years that's not directly related to politics (9/11, Trump's election, etc.)... if not the biggest. Edelman's film is the only thing I've watched…
Review by Ava Davis ★★★★½ 1

1. "This is some good shit."-My mom, who took off work the day the verdict was read, an O.J. sympathizer.
2. I kept on thinking of that one part in the Book of Mormon during Spooky Mormon Hell Dream where they have someone play Johnnie Cochran and he's waving the glove and goes, "I got O.J. freeeee!"
3. I'm literally begging this documentary team to be real bros and do this shit but with serial killers because I am a true crime/law junkie and this FULFILLED MY THIRST and there is absolutely no good media on Dahmer, Bundy, and (to a lesser extent) Manson.
4. My #sjw side was super happy with all the race talk and angles they took…
Review by ChrisCarr1 ★★★★★

Maybe I’m a dumbass, but I’m convinced this is the best documentary I’ve ever seen. I apologize if I’m wrong, but this is the most important piece of content that I’ve ever encountered when it comes to my understanding of America.
Review by Matt Singer ★★★★★ 1

All about the Juice, but never excessively juicy.
Full review at ScreenCrush.

Recent reviews

Review by dvsdny

liked it a lot
Review by jimmyf_96 ★★★★★

Annual viewing for me and Anne, pretty much "intersectionality: the movie." A dense, profoundly American saga.
Review by Katya ★★★½

this man is a piece of shit
Review by Cole Turner ★★★★½

If it wasn't lame as fuck on a technical level like any other ESPN documentary then this would be an easy 10/10.
Review by Travis ★★★★½

My freshman year of college I did a presentation on OJ for my speech class, but the clever guy that I am made the first slide just a picture of a glass of orange juice and I handed out a glass of orange juice to everyone in class before going to the next slide and revealing that my presentation was actually about Orenthal James Simpson not orange juice. I am such a freakin jokester. I clearly did the bare minimum research when making the presentation because I learned so much more information about the murder and trial while watching this than what I had in my presentation. I still aced the presentation but that's probably just because of my natural charisma. Anyway, this docuseries is really good.
Review by sinclairknight ★★★★★

Incredible. I learned so much and experienced the range of emotions. This documentary did such a good job of bringing me into the time. What a journey. What a tragedy. What a story.
Review by Ivan Camilo Valenzuela ★★★★½

Almost 8 hours of a very powerful documentary that really talks about the American history. The story of O.J. Simpson means almost the story of a broken country. Amazing!
Review by notkristenbell ★★★★★

My mom is in this film! Five stars!
Review by matthall ★★★★½

monumental in its sifting and diving into all avenues of archive and testimony
This format of doc often leaves me feeling that something is missing, that only a narrow angle has been seen, that only glimmers of information are present through the talking heads. But here, the long form, the access, the editing and constant reifying of social and political context amongst the individual story of OJ Simpson is electric and genuinely illuminating.
Review by Camila Rocha ★★★★★

“sabe, você precisa de alguma tragédia na vida para conseguir escrever uma autobiografia interessante.“
o destrinchar da história que marcou o judiciário estadunidense. cada parte da história contada de forma precisa, bem articulada, e apresentada nos mínimos detalhes é um rico material tão acessível e excepcional de se estudar, de se analisar, que choca quem assiste ao saber que tamanho conteúdo, bem feito e narrado, tão bem aprofundado, se passou em um plano real, longe da ficção.
Review by Jacob Spiegel ★★★★

An incredible exploration of race and influence in contemporary America. While stylistically it's nothing much to write home about, the content is just so fascinating - it really is all stranger than fiction, and highlights the immense complexity of our modern world. Edelman's bold decision to spend almost eight hours walking the viewer through not only Simpson's trial but the whole recent history of race relations and police brutality surrounding it is absolutely crucial. It reveals how endlessly complex any issue is, and that nothing can be viewed in a vacuum - everything is dependent on what came before it and you can spend any amount of time on a topic and still have more to discover. I'm sure it…
Review by halliegroke ★★★★★

this somehow still wasn't long enough ... but so interesting to see the OJ case in context. never understood before why he was acquitted but after watching this, it was inevitable. the LAPD officers fucked it. the prosecution was a shit show and the glove was such a clumsy move :( but I do believe he did it. RIP Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman.