Locked Up: A Mother's Rage (1991 TV Movie) User Reviews

Pretty in prison

[phd_travel · 7/10 · 6 November 2019]

Cheryl Ladd is pretty and winsome as a single mom wrongly sent to prison after her new Boyfriend frames her to get himself a lighter deal. It's a pretty Hollywood version of prison but the issues are quite well highlighted. Guilty pleas of defendants even when they are innocent. The plight of mothers in prison and their kids. Jean Smart plays the sister who looks after her kids while she is in prison. Watch out for a young Angela Basset.

Angela Bassett is excellent in a supporting role

[catfanatic888 · 7/10 · 9 July 2023]

This is a very good movie with an exceptionally good cast! Academy Award Winner Angels Bassett is a supporting role to Cheryl Ladd's leading role. Both are excellent. Dean Norris and Jean Smart are also terrific in their parts. Soap star Peter Reckell is also very good in his pivotal role. Everyone is good. Cheryl Ladd plays a beautiful, hard working but vulnerable single mother. She meets a guy she really likes but doesn't know he's a criminal who eventually sets her up to do his time in prison. She gets convicted while he gets probation for selling her out with his lies. Her sister takes the kids reluctantly. Things are not easy in prison but she makes the most of her time inside.

Worth watching commentary about prison mothers

[FISHCAKE · 9/10 · 26 July 1999]

The story concerns a mother of three sent to prison for 15 years for a crime she did not commit,on the testimony of the real drug dealer who got off on a 1 to 3 plea bargain as a reward for his perjury. Perhaps this isn't the greatest social drama ever made, but it points up the unreliability of our justice system, and the total inadequacy of any plan to care for children of convicted women, guilty or not. Also illustrated is the the fact that violent (20%) and non-violent (80%) inmates are all treated alike once in the clink. Our totally wrong-headed drug laws are responsible for most people in prison today, although the film doesn't emphasize this particularly. It's a film well-acted and produced and better edited than most TV movies. Jean Smart, an alumna of Ashland, Oregon's Shakespeare Festival, is a stand-out performer as the victim's sister. Her life is as much disrupted by the wrongful incarceration as that of the victim, played winningly by Cheryl Ladd. It's well worth a watch.