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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 185 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 185, April 1995.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Just Cause
Dir: Arne Glimcher
‘Three strikes and you’re out’, is the latest slogan from the law and order brigade in the United States. It means a mandatory life sentence for anyone convicted of three ‘violent’ felonies. For a man recently found guilty of stealing a slice of pizza in California it means a minimum life term of 25 years in prison – this is presumably what Tony Blair means by ‘tough on crime, and tough on the causes of crime’.
In the United States, however, being tough on crime over the last 15 years has seen the prison population triple to over a million. It is now the only advanced industrialised country to employ capital punishment.
A film that centres round a young black man fighting for his innocence from death row has a potent contemporary meaning. Just Cause tells the story of liberal lawyer Paul Armstrong (Sean Connery) fighting to get a young black man, Bobby Earl Ferguson, released from death row. Armstrong is opposed to the death penalty. He then encounters Southern small town prejudices in which the complexities of race, family ties and the desire of the local population to secure a conviction for a particularly gruesome sexual attack and murder of a young schoolgirl hinders his fight for justice.
The most difficult barrier Armstrong encounters comes from the local police who beat Bobby Earl while in custody and obtain his confession after a round of Russian roulette. Armstrong is then involved in a fight against time to obtain the necessary evidence to spare the man’s life – and the viewer becomes embroiled in the question of Bobby Earl’s innocence.
Unfortunately, what starts as a film sympathetic to the plight of the prisoner and the lawyer ends up being a veiled attack on the liberal attitudes that Connery represents. Bobby Earl’s fellow prisoners on death row are portrayed as nothing other than psychotic maniacs, and we are meant to feel sympathy for the police.
‘What about the victims?’ is always the cry that arises when there is a debate over law and order, and in Just Cause we are presented with gruesome pictures of a horrific death. But what good it does the victim if the wrong person is convicted is never answered.
The recently released Shawshank Redemption portrays the life of the other victims, the prisoners, who are left to rot in America’s jails. This film shows Hollywood can be sympathetic to the plight of the prisoners. It shows the possibility of black and white unity in jail, the brutal treatment of the corrupt guards, and the ability of the prisoners to fight for a degree of dignity.
Which is why Just Cause is so disappointing. In the current climate over law and order, it contains a deeply reactionary message which does nothing to resist the right wing arguments that have so annoyingly become accepted as ‘common sense’ in the debate.
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