"I wanted to show that gang problems aren't just in Los Angeles or New York; they've spread to the heartland," Mr. Levin says by telephone from New York.

In 1993, Little Rock had a higher per-capita murder rate than New York or Los Angeles. An estimated 50 gangs thrive in the Arkansas capital, many of them extensions of gangs based in bigger cities, such as the 23rd Street Crips, which came from Los Angeles, or the Hoover Folk, a division of Chicago's Folk Nation. It's like a business network. As one gang member says in the film, "We can score some crack in LA for $500, then sell it out here for $1,000."

Gang War, part of HBO's America Undercover series, presents all these facts, but they're really not necessary for demonstrating Little Rock's problems. The footage is enough.

Without narration, the film jumps from a scene of gang members beating a girl as part of her initiation to several scenes in which they show off their guns and/or their bullet scars. And perhaps the most startling segment has Mr. Levin and Daphne Pinkerson, the film's producers, caught in a drive-by shooting while filming.

"I was just amazed by the boldness - that in bright daylight, they would just drive by and shoot at anyone," Mr. Levin says. "Luckily, it happened near the end of our film shoot down there, because if it had happened at the beginning, I probably wouldn't have gone through this."

When Mr. Levin and HBO decided to make Gang War, the original plan was to go to four cities and capture about 15 minutes of film in each city. Little Rock wasn't even one of the planned cities. This all changed, though, when Mr. Levin got in touch with Steve Nawojczyk, a principal subject of Gang War, who has been the coroner in Pulaski County, which includes Little Rock, since 1983. While Mr. Levin was getting the project started in spring '93, he says, Mr. Nawojczyk was one of the few people in Little Rock looking for solutions to the bloody gang problems. The filmmaker contacted the coroner to ask some questions.

"Steve told me to just come on down and see for myself," Mr. Levin says. "He said that's the only way I could truly see how serious the problems were, was to just come on down. He was right, and after going to Little Rock, we realized we didn't need to go to any other city - we had more drama there than we had anticipated anywhere."

Mr. Nawojczyk served as the filmmakers' connection to the gang members. Many of them trust him, despite his links to the police. In 1986, when Mr. Nawojczyk began hanging out with the gangs, traveling to their neighborhoods with drop-the-guns messages and a poster board full of Polaroids he took of gang violence victims.

"You know, I didn't really know what to do," Mr. Nawojczyk says by phone from Little Rock. "I didn't know what would work, I didn't know how I could make a difference, but God ... I had to try something.

"Showing them pictures was just a way to show them that I have, in fact, seen the destruction and I know what they're going through. And it was a way of reminding them of what a bullet can do. Most of them didn't need to be reminded, though."

Gang War presents Mr. Nawojczyk as a pariah, a sole crusader against the violence. He says that depiction isn't too far off.

"A lot of people would say I'm too cozy with the gangs. They all thought I was a lunatic for reaching out to them and talking to the gangs, and many of them still do," he says. "Meanwhile, while people were criticizing me and debating what to do and pointing the finger at each other, more and more kids - children - were dying. The politics just need to be laid aside."

And that, Mr. Nawojczyk says, is what he hopes Mr. Levin's film will do - get politicians and people who can make a difference to try, at least, to make that difference. The filmmaker agrees.

"There's been lots of films made on gangs, and though most of them were tremendous and no matter how realistic they were, everyone still viewed them as fiction," Mr. Levin says. "This movie isn't fiction, unfortunately, and I honestly hope it opens people's eyes to the reality, a reality that I didn't even fully realize before I went into this film."