Review: ‘Let Fury Have the Hour’ doc features artistic protest

Kudos to writer-director Antonino D’Ambrosio for taking such an eclectic and disparate number of aims, thoughts, subjects and mediums and creating the smart and inspiring — and uniquely whole —documentary that is “Let Fury Have the Hour.”

A kind of think/performance piece about what’s termed here “creative reaction,” the film hears from a stirring swath of socially conscious artists whose work largely emerged as an anger-channeling counter to the Reagan-Thatcher era of conservative individualism.

Musicians such as Tom Morello, Billy Bragg, MC5’s Wayne Kramer, hip-hop turntablist DJ Spooky, Gogol Bordello’s Eugene Hütz and rapper Chuck D; playwright Eve Ensler, novelist Edwidge Danticat, poet and lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender-rights activist Staceyann Chin, skateboard legend and recording artist Tommy Guerrero, filmmaker John Sayles, comedian Lewis Black, street artist Shepard Fairey and choreographer Elizabeth Streb are just some of the 50 forthright voices whose deep commitment to their art and craft — vis-a-vis our sociopolitical landscape — is absorbingly shared here.

Many of the film’s featured speakers also display their provocative talents for D’Ambrosio’s cameras with singer Hütz’s knockout rendition of his “Immigraniada” and a fiery spoken-word piece by Chin among the numerous highlights.

Scads of stock and archival footage — from the historical to the impressionistic — various movie clips, graphics, animated bits and a killer soundtrack round out this singular filmic experience.

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“Let Fury Have the Hour.” No MPAA rating. Running time: 1 hour, 28 minutes. At Laemmle’s NoHo 7, North Hollywood.