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Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Binding: VHS Tape EAN: 9786302132786 Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC ISBN: 6302132789 Label: Media Home Video Manufacturer: Media Home Video Number Of Items: 1 Publisher: Media Home Video Release Date: August 22, 1991 Running Time: 98 minutes Sales Rank: 23606 Studio: Media Home Video Theatrical Release Date: April 20, 1991
Amazon.com: Based on a tough and unsparing novel about the nature of racism by Pete Dexter, this TV movie offers strong performances but ultimately can't match the book's power. Dennis Hopper plays Paris Trout, a cruel, angry Southerner who thinks he still lives in the days when white men killed blacks with impunity. So, in pursuit of a debtor, he shoots the man's young sister and mother when they get in his way, assuming the law will forgive him. Instead, modern justice puts him on trial and he winds up with a lawyer (Ed Harris) who truly disdains his client. Moreover, as the lawyer works on the case, he finds himself becoming romantically involved with Paris's abused wife (Barbara Hershey). Harris has a look of suffering that is affecting, while Hershey simmers with both passion and resentment--and Hopper embodies the pure evil of unredeemable bigotry. --Marshall Fine
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - A hidden, crude, poignant and remarkable work!
First at all: you may argue the racism in movies have reached the saturation point, and may be you decide to pass down this offer. But let me tell you that this criterion may shadow the possibility to watch one of the most potent and admirable performances in years of an enviable cast.
Consider the Dennis Hopper's performance. I think Dennis has made through his career, six outstanding portraits: Hoosiers,The American friend,Blue Velvet, Black widow, True Romance and this one. Second argument Ed Harris as the implacable investigator is superb too. Third: Barbara Hershey makes a penetrating ... Read More
Rating: - a real downer
In case you missed the last 100 movies out of Hollywood on racism in the south---here's another one. Although it does remind us of the sickness history has taught us about,especially around the period the movie is set in(circa 1949),it is too shocking brutal and unforgiving to offer any hope,let along enjoyment.Dennis Hopper's performance is fantastic!He is sadistic and paranoid and eventually pathetic.Hersey and Harris are excellent as they almost always are.The problem lies with the pattness of the movie.It's the familiar plot taken a little(or a lot)further for the shock value.I don't think I ... Read More
Rating: - Sad and troubling story of a sadistic Southern bigot
Produced in 1991, and based on the novel by Peter Dexter, this film which was produced for theaters but wound up on HBO, stars Dennis Hopper as a sadistic Southern bigot in the late 1940s. Not only does he cruelly abuse his wife in a most humiliating way, he goes to the home of a poor black family to collect a debt and viciously shoots a woman several times and murders her 12-year old daughter. His lawyer, played by Ed Harris, defends him at his trial but gradually becomes disgusted with his client and befriends and then romances Hopper's wife, played by Barbara Hershey. Only tragedy can result ... Read More
Rating: - Gyllenhaal with a hook in his mouth
I partially blame Stephen Gyllenhaal for ending Debra Winger's film career. He mis-directed her in A Dangerous Woman, and after Billy Crystal tied a pigeon to her head in Forget Paris, she didn't have a chance. (Jessica Lange was great enough to survive her encounter with Gyllenhaal in Losing Isaiah). Perhaps he is only capable of supporting lesser actors like Barbara Hershey, who he has used a number of times. (Their Killing in a Small Town for TV is probably their best collaboration). Here Hershey is the narrator of the story of the trial of her husband Dennis Hopper for shooting a little ... Read More
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