Alfre Woodard Movie:

		List Price: $35.98		Label: IMAGE ENTERTAINMENT Salesrank: 59580 Released: October 13, 2009
		Our Price: $18.82
		Used Price: $11.25
		MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) Media: Blu-ray

Editorial Review:
Nicole Beharie (The Express), Will Patton (Entrapment, The Postman), Charles Dutton (TV's Roc, Mimic) and Alfre Woodard (TV's Desperate Housewives, Primal Fear) star in this gripping true-life story. Falsely accused of distributing narcotics in a school zone, Dee Roberts (Beharie) is offered a deal she can't refuse: plead guilty and accept a 10-year suspended sentence. The alternative: risk serving 16-to-25 in jail. Realizing a conviction would ruin her life, Dee decides to fight back. Suing the DA for racial discrimination, Dee battles impossible odds in a case that will not only change her life but the laws of Texas as well.

Description of American Violet [Blu-ray]:
American Violet may be based on the story of outrageous injustices committed against Regina Kelly of Hearne, Texas, but that does not make it a good film. It is, at best, a bad film with an important message. American Violet is about a single mother of four, Dee Roberts (Nicole Beharie), who is wrongly convicted of drug charges due to police racism and corruption. As she struggles to stay out of prison with the help of her mother, Alma (Alfre Woodard), Dee exemplifies a stalwart woman who refuses to plead guilty when offered a plea bargain. While names of characters and the town itself are changed, the story in American Violet is allegedly altered only slightly in hopes of maintaining its tragic truth, that a plea-bargain system in Texas forced, in this case, impoverished and sometimes innocent African Americans to accept guilty charges and their negative aftereffects. American Violet's melodramatic sensibility attempts to spark the same indignation that fuels ACLU lawyer David Cohen (Tim Blake Nelson) to embark on a lawsuit against the head racist, district attorney Calvin Beckett (Michael O'Keefe). Cohen, with the help of a former narcotics officer, Sam Conroy (Will Patton), discovers enough evidence to disturb any viewer. While it is crucial to have artful dialogue about this politically offensive topic, American Violet is not finely scripted or cinematically engaging enough to elevate it above second-hand documentary. Still, since the film does cover meaningful territory, there may be a place for it in classrooms, or it may inspire others to work on further exposing gross injustice for the benefit of our society. --Trinie Dalton

American Violet [Blu-ray] Reviews:
great movie - watch it
2009-11-30 - I wonder if Trinnie Dalton (Amazon review) and I watched the same film. Sure there was a rawness and it was not entirely 'polished' but if this film is and was based on a true story of Texas/US in the year 2000, then you really wonder about values and the irony of the US pursuing 'freedom' for nations around the globe when basic freedom and justice were being abandoned back home. The film footnotes said the DA was subsequently reelected! Not Erin Brokovich but Nicole Beharie was superb and the story very powerful, a really great film.

Racist Intent
2009-11-25 - One minute Dee Roberts (Nicole Beharie) is making an honest living as a waitress and sharing her dreams with a customer and soon after she's snatched away by police. Her four daughters go without their mother for twenty-one days while she spends time in jail for a crime she did not commit.
Dee lives in Melody, TX. The police have been raiding her community of Arlington Springs since she was a child, terrorizing less fortunate people of color and her so-called lawyer wants her to become one of many affected by plea bargains. Dee could have been like those who pleaded guilty under duress, but it was the love she had for her own children that gave her the courage to make a difficult choice. She decided to help ACLU lawyers David Cohen and Bryon Hill and a lawyer who resided in Melody, TX, Sam Conroy (Will Patton), fight to make things right. Dee was advised against taking a stand and, yes, she was afraid at times but she had the support of people close to her and she took her problems to Jesus.
When I heard about this film months ago I believe it only played in select theaters so I didn't get to see it. I was glad to come across it on dvd. Like most movies dealing with racial discrimination, parts of this movie irritated me but I did like American Violet.
"After what they did to me, mama, they made it my business!" - I liked that line. And the words confidential informant Porter (Anthony Mackie) spoke at the end of the pre-trail deposition - deep.
American Violet is based on a true story and I applaud Regina Kelly for her courage.

ESSENTIAL viewing for EVERY good American
2009-11-17 - This is quite simply the most moving and powerful film I've seen this year. In fact, the film had me from the opening credits, where scenes of a young black mother getting her kids up out of bed and ready for the day are juxtaposed with scenes of police getting their armaments ready for an assault on a government housing project.

"American Violet" is based on a true story, and while the film makers combined some characters and condensed the passage of time for dramatic purposes, the key events of the film are as they happened in real life.

It's just another day in Bush Texas, where counties were given government money for making drug convictions. Worse, citizens could be accused and arrested based on the testimony of a single informant, in this case a young paranoid schizophrenic whose testimony would never hold up in court.

How then did the government prevail in these cases? By offering suspects a plea bargain: plead guilty and pay a fine but serve no jail time. What they didn't tell those who accepted the pleas were the terrible consequences: no further government benefits, no government housing subsidies, felonies on their records, and no further right to vote as American citizens.

Appallingly, this film reveals that ninety percent of all the cases in the American "justice" system are resolved by these profoundly inequitable plea bargains. What's more, an African-American man is more likely to serve time in jail in contemporary America than to graduate from college.

This story focuses on the young mother accused of dealing drugs. Against all odds, and having no resources to afford a good lawyer, she filed a civil suit against the government with the aid of the American Civil Liberties Union -- and got the government to drop the charges and even amend their practices.

Now they cannot arrest someone in Texas based on the testimony of a single individual.

Unfortunately, the corrupt DA who made a practice of running these raids on the predominantly Afro-American housing development was eventually re-elected (and may still be in office -- it's unclear).

Indeed, though this corruption took place even as Bush was "appointed" President in 2000, the system is still as much in need of repair in Obama's America.

As a white, middle-aged, middle-class viewer, I was shocked and appalled by this sad truth, of which I was unaware. And yes, I used up about a quarter of a box of Kleenex watching this movie.

The acting here is uniformly Oscar-worthy, most notably by Alfre Woodard as the young woman's mother and newcomer Nicole Beharie as Dee, the accused. Charles Dutton and Will Patton also give sterling performances; even the little girls are commendable -- four sisters in real life.

Finally I must take VEHEMENT exception to the editorial review Amazon has posted above. I don't know who the blockheaded woman is who called this a bad movie -- I've never heard of this reviewer before and doubt I ever will again, if her other reviews are as far off base as this one.

Interestingly, the director Tim Disney is the great-grand-nephew of Walt Disney, and is apparently as devout a good-hearted liberal as Uncle Walt was conservative, cold, and, according to some, anti-Semitic. In fact, I will be as bold as to say that if Tim Disney makes more films of this calibre, Walt's greatest gift to America and the world may turn out to be Tim, not Mickey Mouse.

And what does the title of the film refer to? The hardy little plant that almost dies when Dee is imprisoned, flourishing again at the end of the film.

I can't recommend this film enough. Make sure you have a box of Kleenex at the ready, however. You will need it.



American Violet
2009-11-17 - Outstanding dramatisation of some shocking events in Hearne, Texas. The hypocrisy of the Texas legal system is exposed; because the District Attorney of Hearne, Texas, John Paschall(Google this thing)made a deal in Federal Court and saved his skin we have to do a dramatisation. "The DA decides who gets arrested, the police go get them, and the Judge puts them away..." Should be shown to eveeryone in Britain who thinks we should elect Law officers and make them respond to public appetites. Ugh...

Rarely seen docu-drama of a woman's fight for justice
2009-11-15 - I rented this unknown film in Blu-ray from Blockbuster because of the cast: Alfre Woodard, Charles Dutton, Tim Blake Nelson, Michael O'Keefe and Will Patton who are all excellent in this true story of an woman unjustly accused of being a drug pusher. The actress, Nicole Beharie, is excellent in her debut and the story is almost just as riveting as Clint Eastwood's "Changeling". I guess what keeps me from giving this a full 5 star review is that the direction is somewhat TV movish but regardless I still recommend this true story of injustice to everyone who is interested in the law of the land. The Blu-ray is excellent and the film is shown in wide-screen format (2.35).