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Storyline
A regular day in a Louisiana sugarcane plantation changes course when a local white farmer is shot in self defense. A group of old, black men takes a courageous step by coming forward en masse to take responsibility for the killing of a white racist, whom one of their members has shot. As the sheriff confronts the suspects, the young plantation owner stands alone in her daring defense of this group of men, provoking racial tension that makes a compelling drama. Written by
Echo Bridge Home Entertainment
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Taglines:
A Lifetime of Injustice...A Moment of Vengeance.
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 his 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.