49
Metascore
16 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 75Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertThe movie tells this story in a traditional, straightforward way. No fancy footwork. No chewing the scenery. Meat and potatoes, you could say, but it's thoughtful and moving.
- 75Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaPhiladelphia InquirerSteven ReaMay not be great cinema, but it nonetheless deserves attention.
- Draws attention to a little-known chapter in the history of the civil-rights movement, but it doesn’t do much to pull that moment into the present, or to pull the audience into the past.
- 63Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsChicago TribuneMichael PhillipsThe actors do a lot to dimensionalize the material. Parker's Chavis is especially sharp, creating a man with a subtly burning fuse.
- 60New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanNew York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanThough it can't quite transcend its filmmaker's earnest intentions, this solemn history lesson offers several powerful moments.
- 50Chicago ReaderJ.R. JonesChicago ReaderJ.R. JonesJeb Stuart directed, his well-rounded portrait of the community partly undermined by the slack editing; with Rick Schroder as the minister and Michael Rooker as the defense attorney.
- 50The New York TimesA.O. ScottThe New York TimesA.O. ScottA curious, somewhat ungainly movie. But it is also rich and fascinating. At times you think you are watching a clumsy stage pageant superimposed on a documentary; it’s so stiff, and yet at the same time so real.
- 40Village VoiceMelissa AndersonVillage VoiceMelissa AndersonAn earnest, if inert, civil rights docudrama clearly shot on the cheap (many of the wigs appear to have been borrowed from the Black Dynamite set).
- Ultimately, however, the movie is about the fact that there was a civil rights movement at all, and incidents like the murder of Dickie Marrow necessitated that movement--deep into the 1970s and beyond.
- 40VarietyRonnie ScheibVarietyRonnie ScheibComes off as a painfully old-fashioned, flatly directed exercise in passionless historical reenactment.