Since this movie, American Violet, is an indie and I’m not sure how widely it’s being distributed I’m going to just copy/paste my review from The Diamondback. This review ran on www.diamondbackonline.com under the Diversions section this past week.
“Take note: American Violet is no well-intentioned political indie lacking in artistic value, but a major player in league with films such as Milk and Crash. This story of legal injustice and race relations in Texas delivers far beyond people’s expectations and deserves to be sought out in limited release.
At the start, protagonist Dee (Nicole Beharie, The Express) is innocently watering her flowers and caring for her children while the police force prepares for a raid. Dee soon ends up in jail, faced with the nightmarish choice of accepting a plea bargain and pleading guilty to a drug dealing charge she’s innocent of or risking going to jail for more than a decade.
The film argues Dee’s situation results from authorities trying to secure guilty pleas to chase down federal funding, which goes to areas with the highest number of convictions. It also notes the stunning statistic that more than 90 percent of American convicts take a plea bargain and never see a jury.
While Dee could have given in to the pressure tactics of the police and the justice system supporting them, she maintains her innocence. Her case attracts the attention of American Civil Liberties Union lawyers David Cohen (Tim Blake Nelson, The Incredible Hulk) and Byron White (Malcolm Barrett, My Best Friend’s Girl).
The film, based on a true story, comes with the risk of lapsing into a soapy tear-jerker. But for those that found Crash’s big moments manipulative or overdramatic, Violet is comparatively restrained. It doesn’t resort to melodrama, which would have cheapened the natural drama of the scenario.
Instead, Bill Haney’s (The Price of Sugar) script takes relatively normal situations, such as a chid custody hearing, and pumps them full of tension. Because Dee becomes the plaintiff for the ACLU’s suit against corrupt district attorney Calvin Beckett (Michael O’Keefe, Frozen River) and Co., any further legal trouble for her could derail their entire case. Beckett also presides over her child custody hearing. Most writers might have stopped there.
But in Haney’s script, there’s the added concern that Dee’s sleazy ex (Xzibit, The X Files: I Want to Believe) is dating a convicted child molester (Karimah Westbrook, Studio), who has already implied she might wrong Dee’s kids. Thus, the stakes could be extremely high if Dee loses her children to this couple. In the custody hearing scene, Beckett angers Dee by calling her an unfit mother, and she nearly threatens him in her righteous indignation, which surely would seal her kids’ fate – it’s a hold-your-breath moment.
What’s extraordinary about Violet is scene after scene, the film remains tense, moving and utterly engaging. The actors capitalize on the strong material.
Relative newcomer Beharie does a fine job in the lead, delivering all the emotional notes necessary to play the embattled but proud mother. Some fine character actors pop up in almost all the other roles, and the performances in the film are uniformly strong.
Of special note is Will Patton (A Mighty Heart), playing local lawyer Sam Conroy, who experiences a change of heart and joins the ACLU legal team. Currently a woefully underused “oh, that guy” actor, most will remember Patton as the white coach working with Denzel Washington in Remember the Titans. He brings up the same quiet dignity he displayed in Titans but is given a richer character to play.
Haney gives Patton’s character, initially a buddy of the local cops (some he will come to sue), a magnificent monologue that explains his duality beautifully. The emotional weight of his delivery combines with the script to cut to the heart of the character.
The film ends powerfully, as well, and O’Keefe does a great job exuding slimy bureaucratic ooze as Beckett. But his character is probably the film’s main problem – the Beckett character is not given the depth of someone like Harvey Milk’s antagonist, Dan White, in Milk. Instead, he largely comes off as a flat villain (with one notable exception in the aforementioned custody scene).
That being said, if Beckett is flat, Patton’s character shows not all cops (he’s an ex-cop) are bad, and implicitly that not all members of the white power structure are bad. It’s not that the film intends Beckett to come off as flat, but perhaps his vileness is prioritized with this unfortunate side-effect.
Despite similarities to a conventional political film like Milk, Violet will never receive the same recognition (and admittedly doesn’t contain a performance at Sean Penn’s revelatory level). But the script is at least as strong and will never be noticed for reasons having more to do with production value, prestige and, frankly, simplicity.
Don’t make the same mistake. This is one hell of a movie.”
Dan Benamor