Angel City

The plot can get questionable on this one, true, but it's worth seeking out just to see the early work of Jennifer Jason Leigh! Done before "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" (my favorite) this tv flick has young Jennifer as the daughter of Jennifer Warren, another face you may recognize. Their family goes off in search of work, and Ralph Waite from the Waltons is in it too. Fun to see, everybody is sooooo young!

Ralph Waite is best known for his role as the father on The Waltons tv series. He plays a similar character here, a good decent man with simple values of love and family (watch the scene where his family and him pray over their dogs grave). He is a good decent salt of the earth type who unwittingly stumbles into hell! Mitchell Ryan plays the plantation owner who is a real wolf in sheep clothing. He offers him a job and then he and his family are held prisoner in a virtual concentration camp. Paul Winfield gives a fine performance as a fellow inmate and this was one of Jennifer Jason Leigh's first roles as well. I remember the scene where they were picking cotton in the fields and started singing a spiritual, it reminded me a lot of Gone With The Wind. Waite and his family are such wonderful people that you feel so angry and sad at their terrible prediciment. The ending of the film is what I enjoyed the most where they revolted against Ryan. I loved the scene where Waite beat the *$#@ out of him with that pistol and was going to shoot him! It was as if this good man was pushed to the brink and finally backed down. I hated Ryan's character so much that I wanted him to shoot the son of a bitch, after all he had raped his daughter and kidnapped his baby! He sort of reminded me of Jim Jones. Maybe this is a parable about the importance of family love and staying together against all odds, and about the importance of freedom and what would happen if it were suddenly taken from us. Angel City is a first class tv film and it has got a great and satisfying ending that leaves you feeling wonderful. When it comes down to it, what more could you ask of a film!

West Virginian mountain folks Jared (Ralph Waite) and Cloma Teeter (Jennifer Warren) lost their ancestral family farm. They are forced to move out with their children Kristy (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and Bennie (Robert MacNaughton) to Florida for any work. Work is hard to find and they fall prey to unscrupulous employer Silas Creedy (Mitchell Ryan) and his work camp Angel City. The camp is more like a prison where Creedy's rigged system cheat them of their money. Their next door neighbor Cy (Paul Winfield) warns them to leave. Sud and Jabbo are Creedy henchmen who run the sadistic camp.

I watched this solely for Jennifer Jason Leigh. It's way too sincere. Jared is a naive simple mountain folk. Creedy is an evil villain. It's fine to do that but they are simply too obvious and too extreme for compelling drama. They don't let anything go pass. They even kill the dog. The movie piles on so much that it loses perspective. It's kind of silly to have Sud and Jabbo give the evil laugh after killing the dog. With kidnappings and beatings, Cy could have been a bit more specific about his warning. The movie lacks realism by pushing too hard.

Dirt poor southern family Go West!" , find work, get abused and revolt. Ralph Waite is good as the paterfamilias and his change from solid hard-working farmer to (mini) revolutionary leader is believable.

Solid performances all round. It was a fruit/vegetable farm they were working on btw, not cotton - they spent their time pickin' the cuze' (cucumbers).

Nice decry of immigrant exploitation in the food industry. The traps used by the landowner (high rent, booking fee etc), and the hopelessness of the poverty trap get a good exposure Hope that eyes were opened etc.......................

ANGEL CITY is a long-forgotten TV movie of 1980 which tackles the subject of modern slavery in a compelling fashion. Ralph Waite, a well known actor for his role as the patriarch in THE WALTONS, plays a guy who ends up living as a prisoner on a farm ruled by the tyrannical Mitchell Ryans, always an impressive actor since the days of DARK SHADOWS. This slow-burning production takes its time to build up the characters and their lives while punctuating the atmosphere with a subtle but shocking handling of violence. Paul Winfield, best known for his role as the cop in THE TERMINATOR, is excellent in support.