In the 1950's a white fisherman is found dead. The main suspect is a Japanese man, but there is hardly any evidence against him. He gets a lawyer who fights for his innocence, while a journalist begins his own investigation, because the accused's wife was his old girlfriend.
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The review of this Movie prepared by Jack Bauer
In the early 1950s, a white fisherman from an island in Puget Sound is found drowned in his own nets with a serious head wound, and the Japanese-American fisherman who last saw him is charged with murder. The reporter for the town paper (Hawke), a one-armed war veteran and once the teenaged lover of the accused's wife, fights lingering prejudice in the town and digs for the truth as the trial winds on. Scott Guterson's bestselling novel might seem a strange project for the Australian director of "Shine" to take on, but the results are pretty good. Excellent acting, especially by Hawke, and Sydow as the defense attorney (Sam Shepard has a nice cameo as Hawke's father), but the film suffers from some of the same weaknesses as the novel -- a little too pat a plot, languid pacing, and too much dependence on the geographical setting for atmosphere. The sequence in which the Japanese-Americans leave the island for the internment camps drags on interminably to wring out every last tear (and I'm in a position to complain, since my mother and most of her family spent the war in those camps, while two of my uncles fought in the US Army in the Pacific Theater).
The review of this Movie prepared by David Loftus
