Every time Colleen Dewhurst comes onscreen, you can't help but keep your eyes on her. She is so commanding, so humane, so filled with heart, that you really begin to question if she is actually playing a social worker. By her involvement in the case of accused juvenile murderer David Labiosa, she shows more than just a desire to do her job. She is a social worker who also teaches a reading and writing course in the juvenile detention center for minorities and asks Labiosa to join the class and he refuses. But as his social worker, even though he occasionally goes off on her due to his self-hatred and fury towards the world. But she refuses to give up on him, showing up in his cell even after he explodes violently in court. It seems like a lost cause but she refuses to turn her back on him, even though it seems like he's going to get the electric chair, pretty severe stuff for a teenager in 1959 Pittsburgh.
With Dana Elcar as the defense attorney and Joe Morton as the prosecutor, this has a great supporting cast (which also includes Dan Heydara as one of the arresting officers), but the script is very manipulative and extremely melosrajatuc, often making up its own laws to serve a liberal purpose. Dewhurst is the saving grace, and it's easy to see her motherly like concern that she begins to feel towards Labiosa. He certainly doesn't deserve the death penalty, but he certainly doesn't deserve the forgive and forget treatment either. Labiosa does show me many facets of his troubles character, but he seems much older than 15. (He was 19 when this was released.) Once again, it's a case of the faults of the script, not the actor. A lot has changed in the 40-plus years since this was released, but it seems even dated by 1980 standards.
With Dana Elcar as the defense attorney and Joe Morton as the prosecutor, this has a great supporting cast (which also includes Dan Heydara as one of the arresting officers), but the script is very manipulative and extremely melosrajatuc, often making up its own laws to serve a liberal purpose. Dewhurst is the saving grace, and it's easy to see her motherly like concern that she begins to feel towards Labiosa. He certainly doesn't deserve the death penalty, but he certainly doesn't deserve the forgive and forget treatment either. Labiosa does show me many facets of his troubles character, but he seems much older than 15. (He was 19 when this was released.) Once again, it's a case of the faults of the script, not the actor. A lot has changed in the 40-plus years since this was released, but it seems even dated by 1980 standards.