Laughing Crow Entertainment, Schuster’s Cash
Tichina Arnold, Beverly Todd, Peter Coyote, Michael Rooker, Chris Burns, Kenny Cook, Jasmine Farmer, Tom Huff, randy McDowell, Ron Prather
Based on a true story, Lena Baker was the only woman put to death for a murder in Georgia’s electric chair. She claimed it was self defense. In 2005 she was posthumously completely and utterly pardoned for the crime by the State of Georgia.
Born around 1900, this is the story from her earliest days as a cotton picker on a plantation, through a period as a prostitute to stay alive, and he problems and challenges with the bottle. It was a hard time to be black in Georgia. Deep in the South, the wounds of the Civil War were still fresh. Racism was still rampant, and would be for another 60 or 70 years. No one listened to her testimony, no one wanted to know what truly happened.
This is certainly a thought provoking film. It is based on the true story, but if there is a fault, it’s that it covers a lot of history in a very short time. It moves along really fast, and doesn’t seem to develop enough into the character. Also, they took one side and then set out to press that point of view. I have a hard time thinking there isn’t more to the story. Then in the end, it just ends and the words come up on the screen that the pardon happened in 2005. Why? What prompted it. Was was the background on that? Why do the just have to end it with a statement on the screen with no background information at all as to the details of what happened to cause a state to do th is 60 years later?
So it’s a decent story, one I was not familiar with before seeing the film, and it was very interesting. But it certainly wasn’t as good of a story as it could have been.
EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog
Movie Review - The Lena Baker Story (2008) {PG-13},
