American Violet

American Violet

In 2000, the events of this story could have been seen on the news. In a small Texas town, police arrested 40 African Americans for drug charges during a raid on a public housing complex. The informant needed to work with them he was a former mental patient. Dee, who has four kids and had never done drugs before (nor did she have any in her possession at the time), was arrested because she had gone outside to bring her little girl in.

She gets they all get offered a deal: Plead guilty and get probation. She won’t plead guilty.

“American Violet” understands why such raids are made with scant or no evidence. A guilty plea helps the district attorney rack up convictions that make him look like a good prosecutor when in fact he’s been breaking the law; it also means defendants who plead guilty can never live in public housing again and always have a felony record.

But if Dee caves, she goes free, back to her children: Her snake ex-husband snatched his kids and moved them in with his new girlfriend, who has done prison time for child abuse.

Based on an actual case (the names have been changed), this is not just one story but thousands of stories; it happens all the time; it is still happening now; it is so common in Texas that nobody even thinks of it as corruption anymore, only business as usual for America’s most corrupt state where law enforcement is concerned.

The movie occasionally intercuts commercials from the Gore-Bush campaign then under way, though this serves no particular end except to remind me that while George W Bush was governor of Texas he commuted only one sentence out of 152 death-row inmates executed under his watch even though public defenders presented no defense at all for 41 of those men and women and one-third of their defense attorneys were later disbarred or sanctioned by the state bar association.

Dee Roberts is played by Nicole Beharie, a recent Juilliard graduate in her second film role; it’s a stunning performance. She’s small and scared and dangerous: She just wants her babies back, but she won’t say she did something she didn’t do. She gets stronger as the movie goes on – gradually finding out that so many of the people around her are just as fed up with being used as she is.

The ACLU represents Alma (Alfre Woodard) in a suit against the district attorney and the sheriff; when she says they can keep her in jail, she attracts their attention. A lawyer named David Cohen (Tim Blake Nelson) comes down to defend her he needs a local partner, so he talks Sam Conroy (Will Patton), a former D.A., into joining him. At first Sam refuses, but then he agrees because he knows how much he owes these people plus if this case wins, they’re gonna need somebody to sue the next time.

The D.A. is Calvin Beckett (Michael O’Keefe), who really doesn’t care whether the people he arrests are guilty. How would it look in an election year if he went around dropping drug charges? And now the stage is set for a docudrama that may have an outcome we already know, but is a loud lesson about truth, justice and the Texas Way. I know I’ll hear complaints from Texans of a certain stripe. They won’t see this film. They know all they want about the ACLU from their favorite broadcasters.

Some critics have found “American Violet” to be too mainstream, too agenda-driven, too much like made-for-TV, with not enough “suspense.” Say what? Dee is innocent, her lawyers are putting themselves at risk because of their outrage, and the D.A. is a heartless scofflaw. If the movie tries to have fun concealing that, it’s jerking our chain.

What works for me was the strength of the performances, beginning with Nicole Beharie as the convincing heroine. Alfre Woodard in attack mode is formidable; Tim Blake Nelson underplays as a determined, methodical lawyer, not a showboat, and Will Patton in some ways steals the show as a good man who has done bad in the past, knows it and is trying to make up. As Beckett, Michael O’Keefe is rock solid as a man who has more important things on his mind than justice.

“American Violet,” it’s true, is not blazingly original cinema. Tim Disney’s direction and the screenplay by Bill Haney are meat and potatoes, making this story clear, direct and righteous. But consider the story. How would you feel if this happened to you? What if cases like this were to lead to disregard of due process of law at even the highest levels? I wish I could convince hell never mind. That district attorney? Still in office.

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