A Gathering of Old Men

It's a good film for its time with a long list of accomplished and recognizable actors, many in the twilight of their careers, including Woody Strode who may be best known for playing Draba in film Spartacus. And like the ending of Spartacus where all the slaves rise up and say "I am Spartacus" these actors all claim to have shot the redneck Beau. Richard Widmark's portrayal of a Cajun sheriff is a little hard to accept but at least they were smart enough not to have these actors try and use a Cajun accent.

It's 1987 and there are still parts of the Deep South that haven't quite digested the changes that civil rights have brought. One of them is this bayou parish in Cajun Louisiana where a man who was from a noted white Cajun family was busy running down a black man for sport. Out from a window emerges a shotgun and he's killed.

The woman who leases the property on which most of these black people share crop is Holly Hunter and she means well, but has a patronizing attitude towards 'her' people. The man from whose house the shotgun was fired from is Lou Gossett.

But shotguns leave no forensics and as Gossett's contemporaries gather all with shotguns all recently fired any one of them could have done the deed. And as the movie unfolds they all give rather good motives for the crime.

Sheriff Richard Widmark has to sort it all out and keep at bay an element in the white community that hasn't quite accepted civil rights.

A Gathering of Old Men features a bunch of fine performances by some black actors already qualified for Social Security and Lou Gossett who is made up to look like one. The ending in terms of the crime itself and Widmark's handling of the case might surprise you, but I think it's a just one, given the times.

A white man has been shot in front of a black man's house in Louisiana. From the racial attitudes and the houses the blacks live in, I would have said this was from the 50s or earlier, but the police car is like the car I drove in Driver's Ed class in 1976, and a hearse is a 1965 Cadillac.

Candy owns the land where many of the blacks live, and she claims she shot the white man, while Mathu says he did it. Candy knows what is going to happen, and every elderly black man in the area who has a gun is dispatched to Mathu's place, for a showdown with the local sheriff that is reminiscent of the memorable scene from the original 'Spartacus'. They can't arrest all these men, and they can't all be guilty. Meanwhile, the dead man's relatives want their own brand of justice.

There was a lot of good acting in this movie, and so many of the characters seemed like real people, not movie characters. This was true of Candy's white relatives, the dead man's father Fix and his family, and the blacks who came to Mathu's rescue and their families. And the movie was quite funny at times. Some women didn't want their husbands doing something dangerous, but the men were determined to do their duty. Several women showed no fear whatsoever as they sat in front of Mathu's house, and they displayed an attitude that could have easily gotten them shot in the real South of the 1950s. Racial hatred had apparently mellowed somewhat by this time.

There were several deep discussions about such subjects as blacks coming home from World War II (one man wore what appeared to be his army uniform) and preservation of people's heritage.

Holly Hunter was wonderful. In one scene it was obvious from her facial expression that her character was lying. And she showed a strong determination to protect 'her' people. She had been raised by an aunt and uncle after her parents died, an experience that helped make her strong. Her relatives were determined to let her do the job without getting involved themselves. Maybe they were afraid to.

I didn't recognize Lou Gossett, but he is always good. In one scene I thought I saw him, but obviously that wasn't him, because he was Mathu.

This was really worth seeing.

Unfolding more like a play than a TV movie, A Gathering of Old Men amasses a worthy cast to slowly drive home a point about racism that shouldn't need making ... but with this group of talent, is still strong.

The story begins with Charlie (Breaux), a black man, on the run from a tractor (!) driven by an angry white Beau vowing to kill him. Charlie disappears into a shack, and when Beau follows him into the yard with a shotgun, another shotgun appears from the door of the shack and shoots him dead. Charlie and Mathu (Gossett) emerge, Charlie stammers some excuses to take off, and Mathu shoos him away just before firebrand Candy (Hunter), who's known and "protected" Mathu and his people all her life, appears. Without asking, she assumes he's the murderer and begins to recruit every elderly black man in the surrounding quarter to appear with a recently fired shotgun -- all know what she's up to, and all fall in like soldiers fighting their own last, great war to protect Mathu by assuming the mantle of guilt. After all, each has a reason to hate the racist Beau and his family, so each has a reason to stand tall and claim the murder regardless of who pulled the trigger.

Along with a taciturn Louis Gossett Jr, most of the "old men" are familiar as supporting and background actors, and one could stretch the point that the fierce pride and determination each brings to his lifetime-of-indignity role comes from a career often stifled by the Hollywood hand that should have fed him. But even without the big plot moments like Joe Seneca's emotional speech about his son's unjust death, their screen presence -- one wears a suit, another has donned his old Army uniform -- makes a telling point. Add a soundtrack by jazz bassist Ron Carter and the live musical presence of legendary fiddler Papa John Creach as one of the old men, and the production explodes with atmosphere.

The film is based on the novel by Ernest J. Gaines (Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman), adapted by Charles Fuller (A Soldier's Play/Story), and directed by Volker Schlöndorff (Palmetto). Gaines' novel is told from numerous points of view, and Fuller and Schlöndorff use this device just often enough to confuse an otherwise straight story line. Other weaknesses, mostly from the "white" side of the tale, drag the pace and weaken the overall message. The issues the story would like to cover are just too deep to fit into a 90-minute movie.

But aaaaieee -- what a gathering of talented "old men"!

In this tv drama, a group of men band together to avoid arrest. It's a case of strength in numbers when a white farmer gets shot while bullying a black worker. In the deep South, the man who shot in self-defense would probably get the death penalty, so instead, while he hides, all the other workers pass the word among their families to bring their shotguns and gather at Louis Gossett Jr.'s house (where the dead body lays). One by one, they all claim "I'm Spartacus" in front of the sheriff, Richard Widmark. Ironically, Woody Strode is one of the faux confessors, and he was in Spartacus thirty years earlier. They're joined by Holly Hunter, who also claims she shot the man to protect the men who've been working her family's farm for generations.

Since we know he was a passionate civil rights activist in real life, and we know he got tired of being portrayed as the opposite on the screen, I don't know why Richard Widmark would take his role. All he does is portray a one-dimensional bigot who slaps black men while questioning them. I wouldn't really recommend this movie unless you love Holly Hunter. If your feelings are any less potent, she'll grate on your nerves from start to finish. I understand the moral of the story, but it probably would have made a better 20-minute short than a 90-minute feature.