Convicts (1991)

No escape . . .

Robert Duvall, who was 58 when this film was made in 1990, plays a King Lear-like old tyrant in his 80s, more than half-demented, half-drunk, and fully armed. Part of Horton Foote's cycle of nine plays featuring a character, Horace, much like his own father, "Convicts" is of a different temper from his more bittersweet scripts ("Tender Mercies," "The Trip to Bountiful"). Here the violence and brutality of the Old South is portrayed in a remote rural setting along the Texas Gulf coast on a convict farm, where the workers are no better than slaves, and though it is 1902, the Civil War seems still in the recent past.

Duvall is Soll, the owner, raving, confused, forgetful, paranoid. His scenes with his employees, Ben (James Earl Jones), 13-year old Horace (Lukas Haas), Martha (Starletta Depois), and a trustie Jackson (Mel Winkler) are rambling, circuitous and full of repetitions and questions with "I don't know" answers. It's a Faulkner story retold by Samuel Beckett. While there is much talk of death, dying, and killing, there are also moments of comic absurdity. Viewers eager for plot and action will be impatient with the theatricality of the dialogue and the scenes, but that's not what the film is about. They are all convicts, trapped in a dying world and going nowhere. Only the young Horace, with his education, his intelligence and humanity, and his knowledge of a modern world elsewhere will escape. July 24, 2008

Convicts

Don't waste your money like I did.......Robert Duvall westerns are usually great but this one was MAD !!!!!! March 6, 2008

Good life story

Typical Robert Duvall film. It was funny and touching and probably real for someone somewhere in that time period. About the differences in people, thier situations and circumstances. If you like Rober Duvall this is a must have film.


October 31, 2007

Convicts

Story went nowhere for the amount of acting talent involved . I kept thinking it was going to build up to something & before I knew it the Unclimatic ending was there in front of me.
Very disappointed but.... oh well. October 19, 2007

Convicts

Although I have not watched this video, my cousin, for whom I purchased it, loves it. Very pleased with the process. October 15, 2007

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