A gripping, brilliantly acted courtroom thriller from Spike Lee's erstwhile cinematographer Ernest Dickerson. On August 23, 1989, 16-year-old Yusuf Hawkins was brutally murdered by a gang of white Brooklyn hoodlums simply because he was a black man "trespassing"
on white turf. As he watches these events unfold on TV, African-American lawyer John Williams (Courtney B. Vance) flashes back to a time when things were even worse. In 1957, his nephew Charlie (Garland Whitt), the son of John's older brother Charles (Charles S. Dutton), an authoritarian Bronx,
NY, policeman, confesses to the strangulation murder of a white teenager. John believes Charlie's confession was s...
Released:
1999
Rated:
R
Length:
118 mins