The 1969 riot at New York's Stonewall Inn, a protest against unfair treatment of its gay patrons by the police, is generally considered the beginning of the modern gay-rights movement. Stonewall is a fictionalized account of that watershed moment by the late director Nigel Finch, and for the most part, it serves as a respectful tribute to the event. In a notable performance, Guillermo Diaz is the film's narrator, a jaded drag queen in love with a newcomer to the big city who is in turn torn between the timid political-protest groups he joins and the more flamboyant lifestyle of the Stonewall patrons. As a dramatic film, Stonewall works more often than not: The decision to draw its primary characters from various representative types allows it to explore a broad cross-section of gay life—as well as the widely accepted forms of legal persecution—before the Stonewall riots brought the movement to the public's attention. The decision to fictionalize the event, made in part because documentation of the riot is sketchy, doesn't always work, as in the invention of a straight-laced (but not straight) bar owner who meets a dramatic end. Still, Stonewall is a compelling, heartfelt and worthwhile film on an important subject.