A Matter of Justice

I just finished watching this movie on Lifetime. I must have seen it 15 or 20 times, but it is truly one of those movies that seems to get better each time. Patty Duke, and the program itself, were not only robbed of Emmys, but also of nominations. It is an ongoing injustice with the TV Academy. A miracle of some sorts was made with this movie. It was produced in the middle of the true crime tv-movie phase, where one movie looked like another, but this one stands apart on its own.

If you are a fan of Ms. Duke's or of real gutsy characters, check this one out!

A matter of Justice is an excellent movie featuring outstanding performances by Patty Duke, Martin Sheen, and Charles S Dutton. The true tragic events the story centers around were dramatized to make the movie a little more interesting, instead of making up scenes the director should have spent time on facts. The glaring mistakes to me are the military prison which could have been better represented, and the NIS scene. She calls it Naval Intelligence Service, actually it was called Naval Investigative Service, until 1996 when it became NCIS. Overall the movie contains excellent performances by the leading and supporting actors, Hollywood could spend a little time working on a remake to fix small mistakes.

Self defense my foot. There is no way you can call it self defense when someone is stabbed 26 times. This is a sad, yet increasingly typical situation in the military. Chris Brown is not the only troop to be murdered by his spouse, who married him because she was looking for a meal ticket. Great acting, suspense filled story. However, I wish this was a story that never had to be told, but unfortunately, it happens again and again and again. There are countless stories like this out there. Not all of them have ended in murder, but many of them have ended in bitter child custody battles, and some of them have ended in murder. The military life is hard enough as it is without all these women out there looking for meal tickets.

I do take exception to the portrayal of Ada, Oklahoma in this movie. Since I happen to be from there, I felt it necessary to defend my hometown. I'm not sure where the Ada scenes were actually shot. It certainly wasn't in Ada. Ada is not so small a town that a posse of rednecks in pick-up trucks would run you out of it to "protect one of their own" - as was stated in this movie. To my knowledge that has never happened in Ada. Ada is also not so small a town that everyone knows everyone else. It is not a town of 500 people, it's a town of about 17,000 and it has a state university. I felt this movie painted an unfair portrait to anyone who doesn't know Ada and has never been there, as well as the state of Oklahoma for that matter.

I say this because(for a long variety of reasons) I do not often care for TV movies, or take them very seriously. I'm not saying that this was a huge exception to the rule, but I suppose there have been worse.

Patsy Duke, Martin Sheen and Jason London are the loving Brown family, who live happily in the South until son Christopher(London)joins the army. It is there that he meets Dusty(Alexandra Powers)and they fall in love and get married, even though Ma and Pa Brown know that Dusty is bad news. And she does turn out to be. Money-hungry and selfish, Dusty ends up creepily killing Christopher for his money. She pretends she played no part in it, even though Ma Brown knows the truth(how? She just knows), and because of that, she gets money and full custody of Chris's and her daughter, Christine. Ma and Pa Brown are furious. They don't care about the money, but they know that if Christine is left alone with Dusty than she won't be properly cared for. Thus begins their brave struggle to capture Dusty, who goes on the lam after Ma and Pa try to fight her, and let their granddaughter have a little love from them.

The story is pretty stereotypical, complete with court room scenes, femme fatals and the whole bit, and Mrs. Duke and Mr. Sheen's Southern accents are well, grating, but the script is fairly entertaining, and in the course of seeing this twice, I was intrigued the first time(I was also 11 or something)and simply more entertained the second time. At least it has staying power.