Assault at West Point: The Court-Martial of Johnson Whittaker

This was a very good film. The acting was superb and the cinematography was good. The guy who played cadet Wittaker was so good I am amazed he never got an award for his appearance. There is just one problem with the film that kept bugging me for the entire film. The movie is supposed to be about a cadet from the US Military Academy at West Point, NY, and it was supposed to have several flash backs to the that prestigious Academy, but apparently the makers of this film made these scenes not at West Point...but at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, VA. IT is because of that simple, yet major, error that I was unable to give this movie a higher rating. Those who see this movie be for warned. What you are looking at is not West Point but the Virginia Military Institute...which, for all you Civil War buffs, was and still is known as "The West Point of the South."

I am glad this story was dramatized. It is an excellent, if not frustrating story and it is played out well. I do have to disagree with the portrayal of Johnson Whittaker, though. I do not feel Seth Gilliam did a good job at portraying the conflict, emotion and frustration he must have felt. Scenes with Samuel L Jackson were, as always, excellent. And Sam Waterston was excellent playing a bigoted lawyer conflicted in his feelings towards race and upholding the law. This movie makes you incredulous. But, since it is accurate and based on the court records, gives us a good indication of the incredible injustices that the supposed justice system was upholding in the late 1800s. (I know, it was a court martial, not a trial, but still presumably based on justice.)

This is an important piece of history imaginatively staged. Sam Waterston executed a bravura performance as the abolitionist and civil war hero Daniel Chamberlain who liked emancipation but was unwilling to accept equality. The spencerian social darwinianism which infected upper caste society was accurately presented, even though as we reach the twilight of the American era it sounds so childishly stupid. To people of the time what they said stemmed from scientific fact, the novel doctrine of evolution which had devolved into a belief that, if the existing order were not to have been ordained by a Supreme Being, it was dictated by natural forces over which man had no control.

The cast and writers paid careful attention to the diction of the civil war era which to us today sounds so stiff and formal yet capable of concealing much wry, introspective humor.

The film also brought to the fore an interesting character Asa Bird Gardiner little known out of the limited circles of military law scholars.

Well done!

Comparable films: Courtmartial of Billy Mitchell, Courtmartial of Jackie Robinson, Caine Mutiny, Hart's War

Johnson Whittaker was among the first Black cadets at West Point. On the morning of April 5, 1880, he was found tied to his bed, unconscious, bleeding, and bruised. His hands and face had been cut by a razor, and burned pages from his Bible were strewn about his room. Whittaker told administrators that he had been attacked by three fellow cadets, but his account of the morning was not believed. West Point administrators said that he had fabricated the attack to win sympathy. He was tried at court martial the following year and found guilty. President Arthur overturned the decision two years later, but West Point refused to reinstate him. On July 25, 1995, President Clinton awarded his descendants Whittaker's commission, saying "We cannot undo history. But today, finally, we can pay tribute to a great American and we can acknowledge a great injustice."

This Showtime movie is a class production, with Sam Waterston and Samuel L. Jackson -- in one of his more outrageous hairpieces -- as his defense attorney, and with a cast that includes Mason Adams, Eddie Bracken, John Glover, and Seth Gilliam as Whittaker. The dialogue, much of it drawn from court records, is declaimed stiffly, is declaimed stiffly, because that is the manner in which people spake in old-timey days. More interesting as history than as drama, it's a worthwhile effort.