Colère en Louisiane

The cast of "A Gathering of Old Men" is quite impressive for a made for TV movie, with Lou Gossett, Holly Hunter and Richard WIdmark, among others.

The story is set in rural Louisiana and when it begins, a nasty white guy is tracking down a black man and he intends to kill him. However, the victim manages to get a shotgun and he manages to kill the attacker. Because the local Cajuns are a very racist lot, there are fears that they'll start hanging black men...using the clearly justified killing as a justification. As for the local Sheriff (Widmark), he doesn't want any lynchings...but he is a racist and a brute to boot. As for the black community and the white landlady (Hunter), they ALL claim to have killed the guy...making it impossible to arrest anyone. How will this all end?

The film has some good acting and is interesting, albeit a bit talky. But the ending isn't great, as the fate of the killer is never really determined....just the reaction of his black neighbors. Odd...but still worth seeing.

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.

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.

In the Louisiana sugarcane fields, white farmer Beau Boutan is chasing a black man Charlie. Charlie seeks shelter at the home of Mathu (Louis Gossett Jr.) and Beau is shot to death. Candy Marshall (Holly Hunter) arrives to see Mathu with a shot gun. She gathers a group of black locals to defend Mathu and tries to claim the shooting for herself. Her family used to own the vast land. The local whites are mostly Cajuns who leased the land from Marshall. The group of elderly blacks start claiming the shooting for themselves. Lou Dimes (Will Patton) tries to talk Candy down. Sheriff Mapes (Richard Widmark) investigates the shooting with too many willing suspects. Beau's progressive brother Gilbert returns home from college urging caution but anger is rising.

I need the movie to start with a definitive year. The book is supposed to be set in the 70s. The lack of a date leaves me questioning whether it's 1987. The decade makes a big difference. The list of black actors is stacked. Louis Gossett Jr. isn't even the best. The best is probably Joe Seneca. The Cajun side needs better actors. They are mostly a bunch random white thugs. The story has potential but the tension is limited.

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.