9/10
A movie that taught me some history
4 January 2010
Warning: Spoilers
I can't believe I don't know anything about this event in US History, but then there are so many examples of southern racist idiocy and violence in US history, it's kind of hard to keep up with them all.

I've never even heard of this movie despite it including major actors like Jack Lemmon and Kevin Spacey because it makes Georgians and Southerners look, well, not too good is putting it mildly.

Rural racists wrongly accuse a Jewish factory manager of murder, and railroad him using testimony from the actual murderer, a criminal with a long record, then hound a governor who commutes his sentence out of the state, and then they lynch the man after his sentence has been commuted. See the sequel to more of the lovely legacy of this wondrous part of the nation in Mississippi Burning. Makes you shudder to think of what it would be like to get railroaded by a gang of low-IQ violent morons. Read up on the real event online - its horrifying. The movie is not just based on a true story, it is the true story, sorted out 70 years after the fact.

Technically a great movie. All the leads deliver great performances, and I always enjoy watching Jack Lemmon speak for good and justice. The movie is a lot fairer to the lynchers than it had to be. There isn't a conservative network or major channel out there that wants this film broadcast again, but thank the THIS channel for being a great venue of alternative (once mainstream) films of the past. I really appreciate that channel. Too much in fact, it's distracting me regularly.
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