| PRODUCT DETAILS | | Convicts |  | |
Convicts
OscarÂ(r) winner* Robert Duvall "is terrific" (The New York Times) in this "vividly realized" (Variety) drama co-starring Lucas Haas (Witness) and James Earl Jones (Field of Dreams). "Gracefully adapted to the screen" (Los Angeles Times) by Horton Foote (Of Mice and Men) and ably directed by Peter Masterson (Blood Red), this riveting tale of an unlikely bond is "a tasty feast" (LA Weekly)! In rural Texas 1902, 13-year-old Horace (Haas) toils on a run-down plantation to buy a tombstone for the father he lost a year earlier. Soll (Duvall), the crusty old Confederate who owns the plantation, has yet to pay the boy a pennyof the money he owes him. But on Christmas Eve, as Soll becomes obsessed with his own mortality, hemakes a grand promise forcing Horace to confront his fear of death and the harsh truths of a decadent society. *1983: Actor, Tender Mercies
Manufacturer: TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT
Price: $3.51
 Convicts
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| User Reviews |  | It's Horton Foote Quality, Which Some Viewers "Miss"
rating: 4
I'm giving it four stars only because it's not as good as some of his masterpieces like TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL, or his adaptations of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and OF MICE & MEN. But it's still a great film.
When you read the reviews, take into account the reviewers. The ones who dismiss it as boring will be bored by anything Horton Foote writes. His work is too subtle to be popular, so if you want a shoot-em-up Western like THE LONG RIDERS or Hollywood fare like SILVERADO, you won't get that here. This is a play, adapted beautifully for screen, filled with nuances and surprises that are for viewers who notice, or care to notice, such moments in life. Foote attracts great actors for his plays because he gives them the chance to do this kind of work that will hold up for generations and won't be tied to trends or formulas.
CONVICTS is in the same category as TOMORROW, 1918, ON VALENTINE'S DAY, COURTSHIP, LILY DALE, TENDER MERCIES, HABITATION OF DRAGONS, OLD MAN... wonderful screenplays that rely on an attentive and sensitive audience. I've seen every movie he's written, over and over, love them all, and wish the world could enjoy them like I do... but most people fall asleep.
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No escape . . .
rating: 4
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.
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Convicts
rating: 1
Don't waste your money like I did.......Robert Duvall westerns are usually great but this one was MAD !!!!!!
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Good life story
rating: 4
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.
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Convicts
rating: 2
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.
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Convicts
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