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Scottsboro: An American Tragedy

EMAILPRINTSocial Media Productions

Scottsboro: An American Tragedy reviews
74
N/A User Score:

Generally favorable reviews

Based on 8 critic reviews
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Based on 0 votes
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Movie Info

Genre(s): Documentary

Written by:

Directed by: Daniel Anker
Barak Goodman

Release Date:
Theatrical: January 19, 2001

Running Time: 84 minutes, Color

Origin: USA

Summary

RATING: Not rated

Starring André Braugher (narrator), Stanley Tucci (voice), and Frances McDormand (voice)

Covering several decades, this documentary examines the Scottsboro case, an often-overlooked chapter in our nation’s history. The case centered on nine black men, ages thirteen to nineteen, who were accused of raping two young white women while riding the rails in Alabama in 1931.

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

Film makers Barak Goodman and Daniel Anker dig deep into the story and its ramifications, exposing how the twin evils of racism and anti-Semitism combined to foment institutional injustice, and led — if a silver lining could be found — to the triumphs of the civil-rights movement two and three decades later.

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80

The New York Times A.O. Scott

The filmmakers know how potent the material is, and they don't hammer away at the obvious.

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80

TV Guide Ken Fox

Barak Goodman and Daniel Anker have done a tremendous job of sorting the facts from a tangle of fictions, and include perspectives from a wide variety of experts and testimonies from a surprising number of surviving eyewitnesses. Together, they do the whole, horrible episode justice, something awfully hard to come by in the state of Alabama in 1931.

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80

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

The first full-scale documentary about the history of those years, and it lays out lucidly the involvement of the Communist Party in the young men's defense and the ways in which the trials, against the backdrop of the Depression, replayed the murderous quarrels of the Civil War all over again.

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75

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

All emerge as vivid historical figures in this lucid account.

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75

New York Post V.A. Musetto

A well-researched picture of how racism led to nine men being falsely accused and wrongly convicted. One only wishes that the filmmakers had more than 84 minutes in which to tell the story.

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70

Village Voice Amy Taubin

Goodman and Anker adroitly shape a cohesive drama out of a complicated history.

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52

Mr. Showbiz Michael Atkinson

As fascinating as the case is as history, however, Scottsboro: An American Tragedy is a TV show, not a movie.

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What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this movie is 0.0 (out of 10) based on 0 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

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