TRIAL BY FIRE (2018) – Review

Yes, we know that Summer arrived at the multiplex three weeks ago with a certain superhero blockbuster, and the screens are slowly filling with more action franchise entries, raunchy comedies, and feature-length animated flicks. But that doesn’t mean a somber drama has to wait till the “award bait” clutter of the Fall and Winter. Particularly one based on “actual events”, and whose topic is a political “hot button” (the next presidential race is already heating up). This film belongs to a subset of “prison dramas”, stories set in the ole’ “grey-bar hotel” reach back into the silent days and were strong companion pieces to the gangster flicks in the early “talkies” era. That subset would be the “big house’s” final stop: death row. The focus being characters not doing “hard time”, but the “end time”, waiting for the “long walk” and hopefully a last minute call from the governor. Movies like I WANT TO LIVE and DEAD MAN WALKING, based on real cases, have mixed non-fiction drama with the suspense thriller. That’s the tone with this story from the early nineties with a brutal family tragedy giving extra power to the old adage TRIAL BY FIRE.

The tragedy begins in the early 1990s on a chilly early morning in a small Texas town. A little girl playing near her porch sees smoke billowing out of the ramshackle house across the street. A shirtless man runs screaming out of the front door. He uses his car’s tire iron to shatter a window, which releases a furious fireball. The man is Cameron (‘Cam’) Todd Willingham (Jack O’Connell), father of three young girls, twin toddlers and their pre-k sister, trapped inside the inferno. The fire department arrives moments before mother Stacy (Emily Meade), who was at work. But they are all too late to save the children. Investigators pour through the rubble and conclude that Cam committed arson (just look at those Satanic heavy metal posters on his wall). The grieving father is arrested on his way home from the funeral. The trial seems a mere “formality” as Cam’s ineffectual defense attorney never challenges the detectives, nor the con who says that Cam confessed to the crime when they shared a cell or the witnesses to the violent fights between Cam and Stacy. The verdict is guilty, the sentence: death by lethal injection. In prison, Cam is threatened by inmates, beaten by the guards, and forgotten by family and friends as the years tick by, waiting for that date with “the needle”. Seven years later, in another part of the state, playwright and divorced mother Elizabeth Gilbert (Laura Dern) stops her car to help a stranded motorist. The grateful woman asks for her address, saying that others would appreciate her kindness. Soon Elizabeth gets a long letter from Cam. She’s touched and despite the jeers from her teenage kids and her “book/wine club”, Elizabeth drives the two hours to meet with Cam at the prison. He soon becomes her “pet project’ as she pours over the court transcripts and contacts members of the Innocence Project. But as Cam’s “date with death’ is finally announced, can Elizabeth convince the authorities to reopen the case and forestall that long walk to the “death chamber”?

The often familiar tale is firmly anchored by the committed lead performance by the energetic Mr. O’Connell (UNBROKEN) who makes Cam a most challenging “underdog’. Perhaps he’s his own “worst enemy” as he lashes out in the courtroom (though he’s certainly justified) and on his entry to the “big house”, antagonizing the inmates and staff. Though he’s furious at the system, O’Connell shows us that most of Cam’s anger is directed at himself, disappointed that he couldn’t fight the flames and save “them babies”. In the story’s third act the wild beast inside is somewhat tamed as O’Connell gives us a “roughneck” now tenderized by his need for human contact. The actor has excellent support from two terrific actresses, easily switching “dance partners”. First is the complex relationship with wife Stacy, played with unpredictable volatility by Meade. Perhaps their chemistry began when the two actors first played man and wife three years ago in easily the best scene of the comedy/drama MONEY MONSTER (she’s brought in to calm him and get him to take off his explosive vest, but instead taunts him, screeching “Go ahead an’ blow yer’ self up! Ya’ ain’t man enough!”). In the pre “incident’ scenes Meade’s Stacy is “beaten down’ by her double work shifts and frayed by notions of her hubby’s wandering eye. She shifts gears at trial time, becoming Cam’s staunchest defender (much more than his listless council), forming a vocal “tag-team” to berate the whole legal “circus”. But the years apart forces her to leave his side, as she too is beaten down by life and loss. Then in steps Dern as the open-minded, “fresh-eyed” Elizabeth, whose helpful, giving attitude is often mistaken for naivety and weakness. But she too is a “force of nature’ and a “justice soldier” going not only against those who would forget Cam but clashing with her own family and friends, afraid she’s another of those desperate older ladies smitten with the ultimate “bad boys”. But Dern’s Gilbert has a good “B.S. detector”, and calls out Cam when he tries to “snow” her. Dern’s most effective as she pleads with the hardened “Truth” agencies and is a “junior Columbo” as she gets some of the principals to ‘spill” too much. Though few of them are as tough as her teenage daughter Julie, played with a stubborn streak (and no filter) by the superb Jade Pettyjohn, who was also formidable earlier this year as another hard-edged daughter in DESTROYER (keep on eye on her career). There’s also great work by Chris Coy as the “DR” supervising guard Daniels who slowly starts to respect Cam, and by McKinley Belcher III as Cam’s “next cell neighbor” Ponchai who opens the distraught Cam to the possibility of a ‘second chance”.

Veteran director Edward Zwick (GLORY) directs this indictment of the “system’ with righteous fury, but tempers his passion to gives us a subject that’s hard to embrace at times, let along “root for”. In that initial first act, we can almost understand why Cam is “thrown away”, so Zwick shows us that the courts can act more as a punisher of the past rather than for the accused’s current crime. The screenplay by Geoffrey (PRECIOUS) Fletcher, adapting David Grann’s New Yorker article and utilizing Willingham’s own letters, ably handles the midway shift in tone, from criminal trial to blossoming friendship leading to new hope. Some creative choices, like Cam’s visits from the growing ghosts of her kids, remind us of more subtle scenes in MONSTER’S BALL and DEAD MAN WALKING (still powerful after nearly 25 years) and nearly drift into maudlin fantasy territory, but Zwick gets the “plot train” back on track, and chugging towards a finale that’s a rousing call for action, despite a real incident that feels almost contrived, one that denies us the dramatic final scene we anticipated (darn life throwing us a curve again). And just as our emotions are nearly drained, Zwick “bats the last runner in” with a news clip that will have many remembering and shaking their head in disgust. TRIAL BY FIRE, though a familiar docudrama” still delivers the heat.

4 Out of 5

TRIAL BY FIRE opens everywhere and screens exclusively in St. Louis at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Cinemas and Tivoli Theatre