Review: 'Hard Times: Lost on Long Island' Puts Human Face on Unemployment Rate

," which premieres Saturday at the , documents a group of unemployed blue-collar workers living on Long Island; they are all Baby Boomers, about to reach what should have been retirement age, except for , from Montauk, in their early 30s.

These are people who are educated and skilled, but have now been out of work for years in some cases. The jobs they had no longer exist, and when they try to take a job just to pay the bills they are told they are “overqualified.” They are going broke, about to have their homes foreclosed, and simply don’t know how they are going to survive.

This story must sound awfully familiar by now: Seemingly everybody in America has gone through something like this, or at least knows someone who has, since the financial crisis began in 2008. That does not make it any easier to watch a film like this.

While director Marc Levin doesn’t give much new information to those who have been paying attention — many people probably know what “99ers” are, for example — the film makes up for it with its heart. The true strength of this film is that it puts a real human face on the unemployment number — and the stories behind the statistic are truly heartbreaking.

“Having cancer was easier than being unemployed,” says one of the subjects, lamenting that people at least seemed to care when she was sick, but now cannot be bothered to help. Another man in the film, Alan, who was struck by lightning as a teenager and survived both attacks on the World Trade Center, tries to put a positive spin on his situation.

"So you put all this stuff into perspective, being unemployed is something I can deal with very easily," he says early in the film. Unfortunately, we find out later that things turned out to be much harder for Alan than he ever anticipated; so hard, in fact, that at one point he combed over his life insurance policy, trying to figure out how his family would be compensated if he "wasn't here anymore."

Levin never truly makes it clear why he decided to specifically highlight unemployment on Long Island, rather than someplace else. The opportunity to make a larger point about the evolution of the American Dream, beginning with the rise of the suburbs and Levittown right after World War II and ending with the crash of 2008, is wasted. A very brief history of the area is given before the film shifts back to the stories of the current crisis. Instead, by focusing on the personal stories of the families who have been devastated by the crisis over the last three years, Levin makes an even more blistering point: This film really could take place anywhere in America right now, and no matter where you go, the stories will all be just as painful.

"Hard Times: Lost on Long Island," from HBO Documentary Films, screens Saturday at 4:30 p.m. at and Sunday at 2:45 p.m. at the . Tickets are $15.

The documentary will air on HBO in Summer 2012.