If you care for fine acting and excellent characterization, try this film. It doesn't take the commercial, slick, easy approach to the storyline about the reason for use of convict labor on Southern plantations, or about the treatment of the convicts unlucky enough to be doing time at hard labor. Filled with well-thought-out glimpses of the declining southern gentry, the economics of plantation ownership, racism, and other tough subjects, it is also a commentary on human fragility.
