En quête de justice

I say this because(for a long variety of reasons) I do not often care for TV movies, or take them very seriously. I'm not saying that this was a huge exception to the rule, but I suppose there have been worse.

Patsy Duke, Martin Sheen and Jason London are the loving Brown family, who live happily in the South until son Christopher(London)joins the army. It is there that he meets Dusty(Alexandra Powers)and they fall in love and get married, even though Ma and Pa Brown know that Dusty is bad news. And she does turn out to be. Money-hungry and selfish, Dusty ends up creepily killing Christopher for his money. She pretends she played no part in it, even though Ma Brown knows the truth(how? She just knows), and because of that, she gets money and full custody of Chris's and her daughter, Christine. Ma and Pa Brown are furious. They don't care about the money, but they know that if Christine is left alone with Dusty than she won't be properly cared for. Thus begins their brave struggle to capture Dusty, who goes on the lam after Ma and Pa try to fight her, and let their granddaughter have a little love from them.

The story is pretty stereotypical, complete with court room scenes, femme fatals and the whole bit, and Mrs. Duke and Mr. Sheen's Southern accents are well, grating, but the script is fairly entertaining, and in the course of seeing this twice, I was intrigued the first time(I was also 11 or something)and simply more entertained the second time. At least it has staying power.

... I just perused these comments for the first time ... to ALL of you who doubted the validity of these characters and events-portrayed ; you could NOT be more wrong ... this movie is dead-nuts ACCURATE ... one possible stray-from-truth : a slight negative pallor was assigned upon Ada,OK ... the town itself was neither mean-hearted nor an obstacle to justice ... just a small group of residents (mostly her family and misguided friends) ... other than that, this movie is ALL TRUTH and ACCURACY throughout ... right down to that dishwater-haired older sister of hers ... the actress looked exactly like that sister ... you only got a "glimpse" of her mean-spirited angst ... but , trust me ... every fact in this movie is just that: FACT ... how do I know ? ... my name was mentioned in a courtroom scene mid-movie ... they had caught her in lies about her past ... an attorney questioned her about "forest" ... "dusty" was my ex-wife ... I was fortunate enough to win custody of our daughter when she was six-months old ... "dusty" then decided to join the Marines and move to Carolina ... the rest is history ... 'nuff said ,,, "forest"

shine in this film, which is a disturbing account of a young serviceman, murdered for profit. His young wife ("Dusty"), well-portrayed by Alexandra Powers, may have been the culprit. She has a baby too young (Duke's grandchild) and decides that she is tired of being an army wife, and becomes a prostitute in Honolulu.

When Duke's son is murdered, she suspects the worst. After protracted legal problems, Duke eventually wins a minor victory, seeking justice for her son's murder. Apparently as a resident of Alabama, she only has influence due to the fact that she is in a small town, and must hound and harass the district attorney. Charles Dutton, Jr. is also very good as the detective who tracks Dusty and the grandchild, discovering they are living in squalor in Oklahoma, collecting money from the murdered husband's army pension.

Patty Duke is amazing, because she always transcends material, engaging the audience. While this film was based on a true story, a few liberties were taken, but you will still be interested in the outcome. 8/10.

A matter of Justice is an excellent movie featuring outstanding performances by Patty Duke, Martin Sheen, and Charles S Dutton. The true tragic events the story centers around were dramatized to make the movie a little more interesting, instead of making up scenes the director should have spent time on facts. The glaring mistakes to me are the military prison which could have been better represented, and the NIS scene. She calls it Naval Intelligence Service, actually it was called Naval Investigative Service, until 1996 when it became NCIS. Overall the movie contains excellent performances by the leading and supporting actors, Hollywood could spend a little time working on a remake to fix small mistakes.

I do take exception to the portrayal of Ada, Oklahoma in this movie. Since I happen to be from there, I felt it necessary to defend my hometown. I'm not sure where the Ada scenes were actually shot. It certainly wasn't in Ada. Ada is not so small a town that a posse of rednecks in pick-up trucks would run you out of it to "protect one of their own" - as was stated in this movie. To my knowledge that has never happened in Ada. Ada is also not so small a town that everyone knows everyone else. It is not a town of 500 people, it's a town of about 17,000 and it has a state university. I felt this movie painted an unfair portrait to anyone who doesn't know Ada and has never been there, as well as the state of Oklahoma for that matter.