pcphypers I must say I was overwhelmed by the amazing testimony in Redemption. It shows how great and how merciful our Lord is when our heart changes. I cried as I saw this man's courage and pain. Many would not see how God can change a life, making this man a testimony to so many lost, hardened kids and adults. This was one of the best movies I have encountered because the enormous changes he made. If only there were more movies showing how God can change even the hardest of criminals. Then give a new hope for anyone who reaches out. These gang problems I noticed start with a lack of love, a pressure to belong and very little guidance. Love in it's entirety could have kept many of these kids from becoming so hard and hateful. Survival is a reality in this movie and power to stay alive. How great this movie portrayed children desperately searching for acceptance. When rejection was involved by family, etc. then the hardness set in. Then to be children on their own, with only other children to help them survive? How powerful this movie is to show the rest of us in the world, what really is going on. Helping us to see the hate and violence that many of us do not see everyday. I didn't know how bad it was until I saw this movie. The actor did a fantastic job and the others as well. I will rave about this movie for many years as it touched my life immensely.

Claudio Carvalho On December 13th, 2005, I read on the Brazilian newspapers that Stanley Tookie Williams III was executed by lethal injection after the denial of clemency from the Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger. Tookie was the founder of a Los Angeles gang called Crips, and condemned for the murder of four persons. After almost seven years in the death row at San Quentin, he decided, with the support of a journalist, to write instructive books for children, being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and to the Nobel Prize for Literature on the next year.This touching story is very well directed and has another awesome performance of Jammie Fox, probably one of the best American actors in this moment. However, it is very difficult to give an opinion about the polemic and controversial situation of Stanley Williams only based on this movie and a few recent readings. First, I do not know how manipulative this film might be, since it shows only a regenerated and regretted man trying to help children to not follow his path, but never his crimes or how cruel he was while living outside jail. But anyway it is an excellent movie to make the viewer think about some issues. Lets admit that Stan Williams had really regenerated, therefore, accomplishing with the major objective of the penal system. In this situation, his death proves the complete failure of this system, destroying a well-succeeded case of human recovery of a criminal and giving the worst example to the other prisoners. In the other side, there are the relatives and friends of his victims: all of this situation, giving the chance of a murderer writing books for children, would be very offensive for them. I really liked this very awarded and nominated movie. My vote is eight.Title (Brazil): "Redenção" ("Redemption")

paige castinoo I think this movie was really good and stuff and I think that they shouldn't have executed him why? Why because if they didn't he would have made more books on why you shouldn't join gangs and a lot of the books have inspired teenagers not to join gangs all though i haven't read his books yet I'm sure they were really good because they inspired teenagers not to join gangs.I think that Stanley Tookie Williams was changing his life around I don't know why they executed him and I really don't understand why they didn't let him go because if they did let him go he wouldn't have went back to the streets and back to his gang which is the Crips because he was too old for the gang I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be seeing an old person in a gang of people because that just doesn't seem right seeing an old person in a gang it's like seeing old people listening to rap and R&B that's just wrong like seriously man I don't get it why would they kill someone who was changing his life around and writing books on why you shouldn't join gangs do you get it??

Doug Thorburn Although we can't be sure how much of the persona is real, Jamie Fox beautifully portrays Tookie Williams in this well-made film. Likewise, Lynn Whitfield plays the endearing journalist Barbara Becnel, who asks Tookie to provide information for her upcoming book on gang history. The roles, in the end, reverse, when Becnel realizes Tookie needs her help in delivering his message.The flaw in the movie, as in so many that portray addicts, is the failure to link convoluted thinking and misbehaviors to alcohol and other drug addiction. Tookie explains he helped start the Crips to "protect the neighborhood." Responding to Becnel's comment that it was a criminal enterprise from the start, Tookie replies that the cops weren't protecting anyone. "Either I was going to be a victim or a victimizer." However, he failed to note that he'd been doing drugs since at least age 13, when he sniffed glue, and didn't co-found the Crips until he was 18. And like most other hard-drug addicts, he was probably an early-stage alcoholic from the start.When Becnel asks, "How can you possibly justify shooting a man who looks just like you?" Williams responded, "At the core is an embedded sense of self-hate…you start to believe those…stereotypes…depicting that the majority of blacks are buffoons or functioning illiterates, promiscuous, violent, welfare recipients and criminals…You lash out at those individuals that fit those stereotypes…trying to obliterate those negative images." However, Tookie neglected to mention the alcohol and other drugs consumed in addictive quantities by most of those having such belief systems, including him in his prior life. Such drugs cause distortions of perception and memory in susceptible individuals, of which he is one. Nor did the movie forge the link between his sobriety and change of heart, which is crucial to understanding the man.He was too out-of-control for his mother, who took him to his father—whom he had never met—and who promptly abandoned him. While now eloquent and likable, he didn't remark on when he first used drugs—which may have been a period leading to his out-of-control behaviors.Becnel put her history aside when Tookie told her, "I don't want to leave my legacy here as simply being the co-founder of the Crips, if I can keep a kid from coming to this place…" He tells her he wants to right his wrongs by writing children's books and shooting not people, but videos, in which he would apologize for his part in creating the Crips. "I deeply regret the legacy that it left because it left a legacy of genocide: black on black genocide." While making it clear that the course of violence must be reversed, he again ignores the role of alcoholism and other-drug addiction in creating the mindset that leads to the lion's share of abuse, including the ultimate crimes.At one point, the film points out he stopped using when he decided to seek redemption. The link is blurred, but at least it's there. He stopped using, which allowed him to seek redemption; redemption is impossible while still using, because the active addict thinks he's God.What the movie lacks in forging the link between addiction and misbehaviors, it makes up for in good acting and speeches of atonement. "We do good because it makes us feel alive. The first half of my life I was dead…but now the second half I get a chance to live and do something about it. And if I have to die in order to show the meaning—the true meaning of it—then so let it be." And, he points out the importance of self-responsibility in speeches to children: "This place (prison) does not make you a man. The moment you begin to make excuses for yourselves, that's the moment you get on to a pathway leading straight to here." And, "My violent gang past is unworthy of imitation or praise." He admits his greatest mistake ever was to co-found the Crips, while explaining that life is all about choices and that to assume there wasn't a choice is "just an excuse." However, he fails to point out that he never would have engaged in repetitive and horrific criminal behaviors if he hadn't inherited addiction, a common failure among addicts who all-too-often don't understand their own disease.Nonetheless, it's a good movie about redemption. My understanding of alcoholism--on which I write extensively--has turned me into a strong believer in the idea of allowing addicts to do what they can to right their sometimes heinous wrongs, if they are willing. The movie portrays him as having made a very decent attempt, even if the wrong can never be fully righted.