Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, and the subject of the 2005 Oscar-nominated documentary Street Fight, is once again at the center of a new 5-part docu-series, Brick City, airing on the Sundance Channel all next week. In one way, Brick City is a sequel to Street Fight. Now that Booker is finally in power, how have the idealistic promises of that young Stanford football player/Rhodes Scholar/Yale law graduate been translated into action in a city like Newark, where one-third of its residents lived below the poverty line in 2002 and the high school graduation rate hovered around 40 percent? It's as if someone made a followup film to Robert Redford's The Candidate (whose very last lines are by the senator-elect who asks, "Now what?"). By 2008, homicides had been reduced by roughly 32 percent, and in no small part is this due to Police Director Garry McCarthy and a crime-reduction strategy involving street corner surveillance known as Operation Impact. But as Brick City makes clear, the process isn't pretty. Progress doesn't come fast. Nor is it always welcome. As Lisa Durden, one of the film's producers, explained, "people don't like change," and in this case, "change is like breaking bones." He has enemies. (In 2002, when Booker first ran and lost to Mayor Sharpe James, opponents not only called him a carpetbagger but also white, gay, Republican, and Jewish. The white remark particularly bothers Durden who said "it makes African Americans look like fools.") But unlike Street Fight, Brick City does not revolve solely around the mayor. Instead, Booker is part of an ensemble cast that includes, among others, McCarthy and a Newark couple, Jayda and Creep-the former is a Blood gang member and the latter belongs to the Crips. Jayda, now a youth mentor, is pregnant but must turn herself in for a parole violation from several years ago. (Boyfriend Creep remarks that the baby isn't even born "and already he's going to jail. Damn!") Still, Booker is the star. He's jogging down the mean streets like Rocky Balboa, playing midnight basketball despite death threats, dancing with the kids at the playground, in the middle of crime scenes, and delivering a riveting address to Newark's police cadets. It's powerfully compelling and you'll be left wondering what happens next, both for the city and its heralded mayor. At the screening at the National Cable & Telecommunications Association in D.C., I asked Booker about his own future. Does he have any interest in running for governor in 2013? The mayor let out a deep breath, looked up, and said 2013 is still a long way off. "I've got a good four years so we'll see." He certainly didn't rule it out. I also spoke to Brick City's executive producer, Forest Whitaker, who could not stress enough how important this film was to him. Whitaker hopes it appeals across all regions since cities like Detroit are in need of their own Cory Bookers. (Whitaker is soft-spoken, engaging, and not as large as you'd think. He's clearly shed the weight he gained for his Oscar-winning role of Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland. For that, Whitaker told me he gained fifty pounds to play the Ugandan dictator.)