Jasper, Texas is a 2003

2003 in film

The year 2003 in film involved some significant events. Releases of sequels took place with movies like The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, 2 Fast 2 Furious, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions, Pokémon Heroes, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines,...

 American

Cinema of the United States

The cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...

 television movie

Television movie

A television film is a feature film that is a television program produced for and originally distributed by a television network, in contrast to...

 directed by Jeffery W. Byrd. The teleplay by Jonathan Estrin is based on a true story and focuses on the aftermath of a crime in which three white men from the small town of Jasper, Texas

Jasper, Texas

Jasper is the county seat of Jasper County, Texas, in the United States. The population was 8,247 at the 2000 census. Jasper is situated in the Deep East Texas subregion, about northeast of Houston. The city is best known for the 1998 murder of James Byrd, Jr., an event which gained national...

 killed African American

African American

African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...

 James Byrd, Jr.

James Byrd, Jr.

James Byrd, Jr. was an African-American who was murdered by three white men, asserted to be white supremacists, during a racially motivated crime in Jasper, Texas, on June 7, 1998. Shawn Berry, Lawrence Brewer, and John King dragged Byrd behind a pick-up truck along an asphalt road after they...

 by dragging him behind their pickup truck.

The film was shown at the Philadelphia International Film Festival before being broadcast by Showtime on June 8, 2003.

Plot

In Jasper, Texas in June 1998, three self-proclaimed white supremacists

White supremacy

White supremacy is the belief, and promotion of the belief, that white people are superior to people of other racial backgrounds. The term is sometimes used specifically to describe a political ideology that advocates the social and political dominance by whites.White supremacy, as with racial...

 chain James Byrd, Jr. to the back of their pickup and drag him to his death over three miles of country road. When the town is forced to deal with an onslaught of media coverage that thrusts it into the collective conscience of the entire country and the arrival of contentious members of the Ku Klux Klan

Ku Klux Klan

Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...

 and the Black Panthers, the once peaceful relationship between its white and black citizens is subjected to tension. Trying to maintain peace in the community as the trial of the three perpetrators commences are black mayor R.C. Horn and white sheriff Billy Rowles, neither of whom is prepared to handle all the negative publicity. Justice is served when two of the men are condemned to death and the third is sentenced to life in prison.

Cast

• Jon Voight
  Jon Voight
  Jonathan Vincent "Jon" Voight is an American actor. He has received an Academy Award, out of four nominations, and three Golden Globe Awards, out of nine nominations. Voight is the father of actress Angelina Jolie....
  
   ..... Billy Rowles
• Louis Gossett, Jr.
  Louis Gossett, Jr.
  Louis Cameron Gossett, Jr. is an American actor best known for his role as Gunnery Sergeant Emil Foley in the 1982 film An Officer and a Gentleman and Fiddler in the 1970s television miniseries Roots...
  
   ..... R.C. Horn
• Joe Morton
  Joe Morton
  Joseph Thomas "Joe" Morton, Jr. is an American stage, television, and film actor.-Early life:Morton was born in The Bronx, a borough of New York City, New York. He is the son of Evelyn, a secretary, and Joseph Thomas Morton, Sr., a U.S. army intelligence officer. Because of his father's...
  
   ..... Walter Diggles
• Kate Trotter ..... Jamie Rowles
• Karen Robinson ..... Mary Horn
• Bokeem Woodbine
  Bokeem Woodbine
  Bokeem Woodbine is an American film and television actor.-Personal life:Woodbine was born in Harlem, New York to an actress mother. He attended the prestigious Dalton School in New York before transferring to the also prestigious LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in the city...
  
   ..... Khalid X
• Emily Yanc ..... Stella Byrd
• Blu Mankuma
  Blu Mankuma
  Blu Mankuma is an American actor. He has appeared in numerous Canadian and American productions filmed in Canada.Mankuma was born in Seattle, Washington...
  
   ..... James Byrd Sr.
• Roy T. Anderson ..... James Byrd, Jr.
• Neil Crone
  Neil Crone
  Neil Crone is a Canadian voice actor and comedian who does the voices of Gordon the Big Engine, Splatter and Diesel 10 from the film Thomas and the Magic Railroad. He does Phillip the Concierge in the My Secret Identity episode "Sour Grapes"...
  
   ..... Principal

Critical reception

David Wiegand of the San Francisco Chronicle

San Francisco Chronicle

thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...

said, "There's nothing fatally wrong with the film, but the muddled, overstuffed script and sometimes cheesy direction short-circuit the emotional potential of the treatment of James Byrd Jr.'s brutal dragging death five years ago in a small Texas town . . . The better TV films offer commentary and perspective subtly, through careful characterization and plot development. Jasper, Texas doesn't quite do that. Despite great performances from Voight and Gossett, the film trips over its own simplistic analysis of what 'getting along' between the races really means."

Laura Fries of Variety

Variety (magazine)

Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...

called the film "an introspective but somewhat Hollywoodized treatment" and continued, "The director's focus is very personal. Although he doesn't linger on details of the court case, the murder is presented in full-color detail. It is handled almost clinically, but not without sensitivity. To dance around the facts would be too great a disservice. To exploit the sensational nature of the crime also would be wrong. Instead, Byrd puts his trust into his very capable cast."

Sam Adams of Philadelphia City Paper

Philadelphia City Paper

Philadelphia City Paper is a free alternative news weekly in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was established in November 1981 as a spin-off of the now defunct WXPN Express newsletter. New issues are released every Thursday....

thought the film was a "a standard-issue docudrama

Docudrama

In film, television programming and staged theatre, docudrama is a documentary-style genre that features dramatized re-enactments of actual historical events. As a neologism, the term is often confused with docufiction....

 whose pat resolution doesn't dredge up anything like the national horror of Byrd's murder."

Awards and nominations

Screenwriter Jonathan Estrin was nominated for the Humanitas Prize

Humanitas Prize

The Humanitas Prize is an award for film and television writing intended to promote human dignity, meaning, and freedom. It began in 1974 with Father Ellwood "Bud" Kieser — also the founder of Paulist Productions — but is generally not seen as specifically directed toward religious...

. The film was nominated for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Television Movie, Mini-Series or Dramatic Special

NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Television Movie, Mini-Series or Dramatic Special

The NAACP Image Award winners for Outstanding Television Movie, Mini-Series or Dramatic Special:...

 but lost to D.C. Sniper: 23 Days of Fear

D.C. Sniper: 23 Days of Fear

D.C. Sniper: 23 Days of Fear is a 2003 T.V. movie created by USA Network based on the Beltway sniper attacks of 2002.-Plot:...

, and Lou Gossett, Jr. was nominated for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actor in a Television Movie, Mini-Series or Dramatic Special

NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actor in a Television Movie, Mini-Series or Dramatic Special

The NAACP Image Award winners for Outstanding Actor in a Television Movie, Mini-Series or Dramatic Special:...

 but lost to Charles S. Dutton

Charles S. Dutton

Charles Stanley Dutton is an American stage, film, and television actor and director. He is perhaps best known for his roles as "Fortune" in the film Rudy and "Dillon" in Alien 3...

 in D.C. Sniper.

DVD release

Showtime Entertainment released the film on DVD on February 3, 2004. It is in fullscreen

Pan and scan

Pan and scan is a method of adjusting widescreen film images so that they can be shown within the proportions of a standard definition 4:3 aspect ratio television screen, often cropping off the sides of the original widescreen image to focus on the composition's most important aspects...

format with audio tracks in English and Spanish.