L'Épreuve du feu

Well acted and engaging. Don't let the ludicrous 51 fool you. This is a well made, engrossing film with solid performances all around.

Good acting, good writing even though I believe it could've been shorter and so much better. Some characters and relationships are meaningless and do not serve the story, some are kinda weakly-written. A good and impactful movie overall.

Great directing and cinematography, and a fairly detailed account on the real story of Cameron Todd Willingham, played excellent by Jack O'Connell. Casting was great and all actors were convincing in their roles. Laura Dern was outstanding. The score/music was great and placed perfectly in certain scenes.

The first half of the film was paced perfectly and had great tense moments, but I feel the second half dragged out a little too long with slower pacing and overly extended scenes. The 127 min runtime should have been edited down minus 20 mins from the second half of the film.

Otherwise and outstanding production that had a roller-coaster of emotions and tense moments due to the excellent acting and technical details the filmmakers created. It really makes you think on how terrible the justice system was and still is, and how politics played out during then-Texas governor Rick Perry's poor judgement.

It's a shame this excellent production has some bad ratings/reviews, some reviewers saying it's predictable and cliched. This is how the real story played out, so any so-called cliches, sadly are actual facts. Thus a well deserved 9/10 from me, and a definite recommend if you can forgive the slow pacing in the second act. And if anyone thinks this review is fake, click on my username to see my 1000+ ratings and 700+ reviews. Now go see this excellent biopic!

When compared to the true story they did quite good. There were a few things not explained properly like who was the woman who told Laura Dern to write to a prisoner? And they didn't show enough of the ex wife and her feelings. However it was an interesting movie with good acting that got me teary.

This was a well acted and thought provoking film which should challenge anyone's opinion of the death penalty and the serious flaws in the justice system. It was quite a long film, but worth watching.