Mayor of Mayhem review – a jaw-dropping look at a crack-smoking politician who opened the floodgates

This provocative documentary about the hugely controversial Toronto politician is a chaotic watch – and features tactics that would go on to serve TrumpI am surprised at how often 2013 feels like a lifetime ago, in political terms at least. That was the year the late Rob Ford, then mayor of Toronto, was reported to have been filmed smoking crack cocaine. He denied it, twisting the allegations into what he suggested was a smear campaign by an untrustworthy, left-leaning mainstream media. A few months later, the city’s chief of police, Bill Blair, held a press conference in which he announced that the police had the video in question, and it showed Ford smoking a glass pipe. The mayor was defiant. “I have no reason to resign,” he said. He didn’t.Trainwreck: Mayor of Mayhem manages to squash the chaos of Ford’s many scandals into an appropriately hectic 49 minutes of documentary. (The fact that the police reporting the existence of a crack pipe video is only one of these scandals is telling: a reporter here vividly likens the number of controversies surrounding Ford to “sweat off a runner”.) It provides a brief account of his entry into politics, and viewers with an interest in the psyche of “controversial” politicians will be amazed and astonished to learn that, like Donald Trump, Ford was probably motivated by wanting to impress his tough millionaire businessman father, who had been a bellicose politician himself. Continue reading...

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