Director Sharon Liese’s “Seized” is a smart, thorough, and quietly furious look at how power gets abused, especially when the people abusing it are convinced no one’s really watching. When the small town of Marion, Kansas is thrust into the international spotlight after a police raid on the Marion County Record newspaper and the subsequent death of its 98-year-old co-owner, what unfolds is less a whodunit than a slow motion autopsy of power abuse, civic cowardice, and the fragility of constitutional rights when they’re inconvenient to the people in charge.
The police raid of a small town paper is already a fantastic topic for a documentary, but Liese creates something richer and more unsettling. She resists sensationalism while fully embracing the absurdity and outrage baked into the facts. This isn’t a flashy or manipulative documentary, but one that’s extensive, patient, and deeply reported, all qualities that give the film its authority and bite.
Liese understands that local politics have their own ecosystem that’s rich with dense hierarchies, long memories, bruised egos, and a quiet assumption that power will never be seriously challenged. None of Marion’s public servants emerge particularly well here. From the police chief to certain city council members, they come off not as guardians of the public good, but as petty authoritarians who are far more interested in settling scores and protecting their turf than serving the people who elected them. Even the mayor appears more focused on preserving his local fiefdom and managing optics than defending the First Amendment.
Nobody here is particularly likable, even editor Eric Meyer (who is at the center of it all). He’s an unpopular presence in town, and it’s easy to see why. Meyer runs the paper with a stubborn moral clarity that doesn’t always make him likable, and the film never pretends otherwise. If there’s a DUI, your name goes in the paper. If someone’s kid can’t spell, it might show up in an editorial poking fun of the fact. In a place where everybody knows everybody, that kind of scrutiny is bound to create enemies, and Marion is no exception. The film’s refusal to soften Meyer into a saint is one of its greatest strengths, proving to be a choice that lends a whole lot of credibility to the story.
The film clearly lays out the tangled factors that led to the raid, from local political infighting, law enforcement misconduct, wounded pride, and a sketchy saga involving a powerful visiting politician and a deeply compromised police chief. It’s the sort of story that sounds exaggerated until you watch it unfold, with each decision becoming more reckless than the last.
The specificity of the story, its vivid (and often infuriating) cast of characters, and its weighty ethical and democratic consequences make the film a reminder of how easily the First Amendment can be trampled by people in power. In a moment when journalism feels constantly under siege, “Seized” is certainly sobering. It’s well made, deeply reported, and smart enough to trust its audience. The takeaway is clear and unsettling: if this can happen in Marion, Kansas, it can happen pretty much anywhere.
By: Louisa Moore
Screen Zealots 