Based on a true story.

I will try not to gush about this movie. It won’t be easy. Everything about it is perfect. I should have given it 5 Stars, but I’m saving that, just in case something unimaginable comes along.

The Scottsboro Boys. Nine young black men who were unjustly accused of rape, brought to trial and convicted of that charge in 1931. All nine were sentenced to die in the electric chair by an Alabama jury. An appeal to the US Supreme Court led to a second trial for the nine. Sam Leibowitz, an attorney from New York who had never lost a capital case, agreed to represent the nine in their new trials – without compensation – because he saw that they had been treated unjustly. Sam Leibowitz believed that any jury of 12 considerate people, when presented with the facts, would not fail to see and agree that the nine were not guilty.

Much of the film was filmed on location in Monroeville, Alabama (90 miles south of Montgomery). The Old Monroe County Courthouse served as the courthouse where the new trial takes place. The original old courthouse had recently been restored to its original condition, and was a perfect period setting. Many other locations, in towns across Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia, were used for backdrops and sets to complete the authentic look and feel of the early 1930’s. The result was an absolutely beautiful, beautiful, viewing experience, a feast for the eyes.

I liked the film tremendously. It showed all of the people as real human beings, warts and all. It did not represent any of the characters as totally good or bad, save for one, who was cold, dark, calculating, and wicked. For that one, it would be hard to find a shred of virtue. Because the director was careful to portray the people in a fair and honest way, it is possible to believe what occurred with the jury even as we wholeheartedly reject their conclusion. We were shown that the mindset of white people in the South was nurtured from birth to regard blacks as lesser beings, of little or no worth. The guilt of the black boys was not only assumed, it was considered fact. A trial was merely a formality. It is terrifying to me to realize that ‘good’ men and women can do evil things, seemingly unaware of that evil.

This film portrayed American heroes. James Horton (David Strathairn), the judge in the first retrial, overturned the jury’s sentence and was never reelected to the bench. Sam Leibowitz (Timothy Hutton) defended each of the nine for years through various court actions. People who stand up against prejudice and injustice any time are to be lauded, but even more so during the 1930’s, before it became more accepted to extend such consideration to people of color. How sad that even today we continue to need such heroes.