Michael DeZubiria In the movie, it is stated that the Bible says "An eye for an eye." There is, first of all, the old saying that an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind, but I think a more important concern is that an eye for an eye being applied in this case would lead to three "death by dragging" convictions. That would be a pretty bad publicity stunt, to put it mildly, even though the three men who would do something like that to someone do not deserve to live. My thought during the movie was that George W. Bush was the governor at the time, and he famously stated that he gave an average of 15 minutes of consideration to each case before approving a death sentence.Jasper, Texas is a brilliant TV movie about the horrendous dragging death of James Byrd in 1998, as well as the staggering ineptitude of the government, brought on by conflicting policies. The movie, for example, certainly doesn't believe in the boundlessness of the Second Amendment. There are extensive scenes where the immediately likable but barely literate town sheriff, played brilliantly by Jon Voigt, struggles to convince the Black Panthers not to bring guns to their demonstration outside the courthouse, but is rendered powerless by their right to bear arms.True, they have the right to bear arms, but do they have the right to incite violence? To instigate a riot? These are both avenues by which the sheriff could have forbidden them by law from appearing armed in front of the courthouse, but chose to ignore them or was unaware that he had the power to stop people from inciting violence, an intention which the Black Panthers and KKK made no effort to hide. The Black Panthers plan a demonstration outside the courthouse to rival the KKK, a group of backward lunatics who also organized a demonstration. I didn't even know the KKK still existed, this is a group whose beliefs are so absolutely archaic that it is indeed heartbreaking to know that there are still people in this very country, in the 21st century, who still adhere to them. It's pathetic. But the Black Panthers, as this movie shows, are no less racist than the KKK.The trial scenes in the film are great, although we only see the trial of one of the three men involved in the murder, and at one point the dirtbag defense attorney objects, saying that no chain has been introduced as evidence. I would have thought that he would have been well aware of the fate of the chain used to kill James Byrd, at least from the prosecuting attorney, since both sides are required by law to reveal to the other side the details of their respective cases. Also, in one scene, as a friend of the murderer reads to the court a letter that he wrote her in which he says "white is right," he mouths the words along with her and then grins, proud of his racist wit but apparently unaware that he is helping to cement his conviction. We didn't need that. We know the guy's guilty.The movie makes it very clear, however, that it is the media that creates the real trouble with things like this. There is one reporter who would constantly ask questions designed to make the interviewee uncomfortable of back them into a corner. Every time this woman opened her mouth I wished someone would take that microphone and shove it in. It's an interesting parallel that blacks and whites work together on this case and are friends with each other outside of work, but the people that they represent seem completely divided. In one scene, however, we learn that racism exists on all levels, and the movie ends with a sign that racism will go on. It's odd that there is all of this talk about whether or not the town is a racist town, which might be hard to prove even given the heinous murder that took place went unpunished since the town has a black mayor. Although the trial resulted in the right decision, it is clear at the end of the movie that the race situation might be worse off than it was before. I like to think that the human race is headed in the right direction, though.

Robert J. Maxwell Anyone looking for a typical true-crime drama with suspenseful courtroom scenes -- the kind of thing that premium TV channels do fairly effectively -- won't find it here. This is a low-key, sometimes leisurely look at racial relationships in a small Texas town in 1998.The crime, which was true enough, is utterly horrifying: a black man dragged for no reason for miles behind a speeding pick-up truck by three young white men.So the movie is not a mystery. It's not a courtroom drama either. The scenes in court are rather quickly done. Instead we have John Voight as the slow-moving thoughtful county sheriff and Lou Gossett, Jr., as the nervous mayor of Jasper. The film deals with how the crime brings to the surface of this ostensibly placid little community the racial tensions that exist in its emotional infrastructure. The tensions are symbolized by a broken-down weed-covered wire fence that segregates the cemetery into black and white areas."We've got good folk here," says Gossett, looking out his office window. And indeed the police chief is white and the mayor and many members of the city council black, and law enforcement is thoroughly desegregated, and everyone is polite and friendly to one another. But the murder confuses everyone, mixes things up in an unpleasant way, generates ideas that make people uncomfortable, prompts them to say things and to behave in ways that they otherwise would not have done. But everything is okay in Jasper, Texas, say the residents, while Byrd, the victim, is being buried in the black section of the cemetery. Frantic journalists come and the black panthers descend upon the town, fully armed, followed by the KKK. After all this has gone down, the town council, the mayor, the sheriff, and their families are having dinner al fresco with candles guttering in the breeze. Everyone is puzzled about what is going on. And in an attempt at reasoned discourse, both the blacks and the white people reveal prejudices that had no one seems to have been aware of, either in themselves or the other parties, or at any rate had never acknowledged. The dinner scene ends with Voight and Gossett sitting across the table from each other -- neither of them angry, both of them bemused and sad.You can see through the rusty wire fence, half hidden by vines, but it's still there. No easy answers are offered. None are possible. It isn't simply a white problem. It's a problem for blacks too, a population in which what was once a defensive solidarity has come to take on a function of its own. And it's a problem over much of the world. Take a look at Rwanda ten years ago. Or the "ethnic cleansing" in the former Yugoslavia. This is one tough nut to crack, as the movie acknowledges, although there is no question but that this outbreak was "started" by a couple of renegade Aryan supremacists. Does the movie end happily? Surprisingly -- for a Hallmark Production -- the answer is a firm "yes and no." The wire fence is torn down, the murderer convicted and sentenced to death. (The first time a white man has been condemned for killing a black man in Texas since 1854 in a case which was a dispute over who the slave belonged to.) Yet, at the end, Gossett has lost his pension and is out of office.There's craftsmanship evident in this film. The writing isn't bad. Neither are the performances. One scene is particularly poignant. During the trial we have seen the father of the murderer seated in court, a stereotypical redneck cracker peckerwood with a creased mean-looking face, in a wheelchair with cannulae in his nose, his expression a sort of fixed glower. The victim's father is in court too. An overweight sodden-seeming black man with very dark skin and a sad face. When the trial is over, the son sentenced, and everyone has left the court except these two men, the old white guy wheels himself over and pauses in front of the black guy. We expect a confrontation, but we don't get it. The father of the white murderer apologizes abjectly and clumsily to the father of the black victim, saying, "I don't know how I could of raised a boy like that." The old black man grasps his arm lightly and replies, "It ain't your fault. We're just two people who lost our boys." It's a touching moment.The director seems to need more seasoning. There are violent inserts, several seconds each, of the victim being dragged behind the truck, screaming, the screen red and black. It's as if someone had thought to throw them in because the story needed juicing up. But the scenes are more distracting than shocking; they interrupt the flow of what is a fairly good film. And the lighting needed more thought than it was given. Why should a courtroom be so poorly lighted that we can barely make out the faces of the spectators, even in close up? The score fits the rest of the film, and the location shooting, which I take to be Canadian, is unevocative. These problems aside, this is a rather intelligent treatment of a fairly complicated problem, pinned down as America's Great Social Divide by Gunnar Myrdal and others long ago. We can always end a war, one way or another, but pulling down that wire fence is a much more difficult job.

SgPepr Aside from the Lifetime comparison this is a pretty decent dramatization of the terrible crime in Jasper. Really believable performances by both Jon Voight (with quite a believable Southern accent, similar to Bill Clinton's) and Louis Gossett, Jr. This would probably have been much more intense as a major motion picture theatrical release, but it's worth checking out as it is. In a couple of brief scenes, the film interjects real news clips of Bill Clinton and others speaking about the incident.

George Parker "Jasper, Texas" recounts the events surrounding the horrible killing-by-dragging of a black man by three white men near the title town which shocked America in 1998. This Showtime product exercises restraint in exploiting and sensationalizing the tragic crime while focusing on a small town trying to cope with finding itself at the center of national attention as media, FBI, Black Panthers, and the KKK converge on it. Voight and Gossett turn in solid performances as the town's Sheriff and Mayor respectively in this thin story with little extraordinary drama beyond the headlines. Somewhat weak as a stand-alone feature, "Jasper, Texas" will play best for those with a particular interest in the infamous Jasper story. (B-)