Boys of Baraka (Tue., Sept. 12, 10 p.m., PBS stations) Depicting Baltimore as a crime-infested hellhole is something of a cottage industry: first Homicide and its assorted offspring, now Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's alarming documentary. As a hip-hop beat blares, images of urban degradation whip by: boarded-up buildings, flashing police lights, clusters of young black men erupting in violence. Not every image is on point — that scraggly fellow waiting for the bus with a plastic bag in his hand might be on his way to work — but Boys of Baraka has a point to make, and in a hurry. The deal is sealed by an onscreen statistic: 61 percent of the city's African-American boys don't make it through high school. The only way for them to succeed is to get out.

Way out: Kenya, to be specific, where a privately funded two-year program awaits Devon, Montrey and Richard, 12- and 13-year-olds who are deemed both "at risk" and worth taking a risk on. At first, the strange environs are unnerving, and the boys act out: even Devon, an aspiring preacher, gets kicked out of class. More troubling is Montrey, a generally sweet boy given to fits of temper that become more physical as he grows in size. At once heartbreaking and infuriating, he's the kid most obviously in need of a change of environment, and it takes hold, although not without strain. When a fight breaks out, Montrey and the other boy are taken to a remote area and left to assemble the tent they'll sleep in that night, with no instructions, and no fighting allowed. Lacking of an audience for his bravado, Montrey complies, and by evening's end is counseling the other boy.

Not surprisingly, the boys' return to Baltimore is a rude awakening. Devon looks like he's been hit by a truck. You might wonder whether this is the city's fault or the program's — putting kids back into their environment is as tricky as taking them out of it. But Grady and Ewing don't address the subject, and they don't much differentiate the homes the children come from. (Montrey's seems particularly absent, since problems like his don't arise out of thin air.) The filmmakers have a point to make, and they're careless with details on the way to making it. (A similar flaw afflicts their more recent Jesus Camp.) Boys of Baraka is an urgent, unsettling film of protest, but it has casualties of its own. (Note to WHYY viewers: Baraka's screening is at 11 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 22.)

(sam@citypaper.net)