Dunsmore

Well told story of an interesting event .

No the most cinematically brilliant but one of those small time movies well worth watching.

This movie is a heck of a lot of fun!!!

Here's how it breaks down:

The death of a feared and hated man leads to a conspiracy of silence in this drama. Walter Taylor (Kadeem Hardison) is an investigator from the state attorney general's office who is sent to a small Southern town to investigate an unusual murder. Ronny Roy Pritchett (W. Earl Brown) was a town bully who could intimidate just about anyone into giving him what he wanted until he was found outside a local tavern one night with 40 shots in his body and no witnesses who would say they saw or heard the attack. With the help of cheerful but ineffectual Sheriff Miller (Rus Blackwell), Taylor begins questioning citizens about Pritchett, including his two wives (Jeanetta Arnette and Alicia Lagano), who have decidedly different memories of their late husband, and Mildred (Talia Shire), the wife of a local pastor who was murdered a few weeks before Pritchett. In time, Taylor begins to piece together a picture of Pritchett's REIGN OF TERROR in the town, as well as his brutally violent relationship with former Sheriff Breen (Barry Corbin). Directed by Peter Spirer, who previously made several respected documentaries on hip-hop culture, including Beef, Tupac Shakur: Thug Angel -- The Life of an Outlaw, and Rhyme & Reason, Dunsmore rocks out like rockstar!

Bottom line: you'll want more, more, MORE of Dunsmore!

After a violent opening and a setup to let you get to know the characters, the movie keeps building momentum as we realize that nothing is really what it seems to be. In the end it makes you think about right and wrong without preaching at you. I highly recommend it.

This is an awesome film depicting the dark side of life for one small town's citizen. All the characters seem very well done. It seemed that everyone had a motive for the crime that occurred, yet everyone had an alibi. Because it was a quite serious movie, i particularly liked the comic relief of Gilroy (i think was his name). He lightened up some of the situations. You have to wonder was that what he was really like or did he put this act on for the outsiders visiting the town. The bad guy is truly bad and you can see why what happens to him happens. I don't usually like flashbacks, but this film contains good use of them. The sheriff was a good character - his face is familiar, i think i have seen him on TV. Scary (for that town) to think that the film was "based on a true story!" Well done.

A brawny, devil-may-care bully named Ronny Roy Pritcher (Earl Brown) terrorizes the residents of the small town of Dunsmore. But very quickly into the plot, the bully gets gunned down outside the local tavern. Enter Walter Taylor (Kadeem Hardison), representative of the State's Attorney General's Office, to try to figure out what happened. Most of the plot centers on Taylor's investigation of the locals: deadbeats, hillbillies, trailer park ladies, and other stereotyped characters.

The script asks viewers to think about a couple of rather weighty issues. Is it right for someone to dispose of a bully when local law enforcement is ineffective? Is it right for a law enforcement outsider to intrude into a small town that seems able to handle its problems on its own?

Aside from the film's thematic value, I just didn't much care for this film. For one thing, the locations are all generic. The town of Dunsmore is not set in any particular state; we never learn what "state" Walter Taylor's Attorney General's Office represents. There's a conspicuous attempt to remove the story from any real location. With such a coy script, the film forgoes a sense of realism.

Further, the script has too many flashbacks. And the TV "news" coverage scenes, and scenes of TV reporters trying to get a story, are super, super annoying. Such a film cliché reeks of lazy scriptwriting. Kadeem Hardison phones in his performance, which is dull and lifeless. On the other hand, Jeannetta Arnette gives a really fine performance as the trailer park wife of Ronny Roy.

Overall, aside from deep themes implied in the story premise, I found this film to be mediocre at best. It gets off to a good start with some atmospheric suspense. But the plot goes nowhere; the ending disappoints, along with other elements. And I could have wished for some other actor to play the role of Walter Taylor.