Other Titles • Convicts • Horton Foote's Convicts (1990)
Synopses for Convicts (1990)
1.
Freedom Has Its Price. Oscar® winner Robert Duvall (1983, Tender Mercies) "is terrific" (The New York Times) in this "vividly realized" (Variety) drama co-starring Lukas Haas (Witness) and James Earl Jones (Field Of Dreams). "Gracefully adapted to the screen" (Los Angeles Times) by Horton Foote (Of Mice And Men) and ably directed by Peter Masterson (Blood Red), Convicts is at once engrossing, poignant and heartrending. In 1902 rural Texas, 13-year-old Horace (Haas) toils on a run-down plantation to buy a tombstone for the father he lost a year earlier. Soll (Duvall), the crusty old Confederate who owns the plantation, has yet to pay the boy a penny of the money he owes him. But on Christmas Eve, as Soll becomes obsessed with his own mortality, he makes a grand promise...forcing Horace to confront his fear of death and the harsh truths of a decadent society.
2.
The works of Texas-born writer Horton Foote are always dealing with transition and transformation, caused by the intermingling of time and experience, and Convicts is a prime example of Foote's thematic consistency. It's also one of several fruitful collaborations between Foote and actor Robert Duvall, whose career has connected with Foote's at pivotal moments since Duvall's screen debut in the Foote-scripted classic To Kill a Mockingbird. And while Convicts may lack the emotional power of 1971's Tomorrow or the dramatic delicacy of 1983's Tender Mercies, it adds resonance to their mutual body of work. Here, in a story set in coastal Texas in 1902, Duvall plays an eccentric, dying sugar-plantation boss who takes a young boy (Lukas Haas) under his wing to teach him a few of life's harsher lessons.
His frontiers long since conquered, with slaves of the past now replaced by local convict laborers, the boss is a stubborn, violent, hardened relic of a bygone era, and Duvall's performance breathes feisty life into a man who's ready for death (well, almost), but not without firing a few more rounds from his trusty Colt .45. It's a bit theatrical (and veteran stage director Peter Masterson--Mary Stuart's father--approaches Foote's play adaptation with dry visual style), but Convicts is bathed in the candlelight of a passing age, and its tone is suitably wise and keenly observant. Barely released in theaters, this film is ripe for rediscovery. --Jeff Shannon
3.
In rural Texas 1902, 13-year-old Horace (Haas) toils on a run-down plantation to buy a tombstone for the father he lost a year earlier. Soll (Duvall), the crusty old Confederate who owns the plantation, has yet to pay the boy a penny of the money he owes him. But on Christmas Eve, as Soll becomes obsessed with his own mortality, he makes a grand promise...forcing Horace to confront his fear of death and the harsh truths of a decadent society.
4.
Written by Academy-Award winning writer, Horton Foote, "Convicts" tells the story of young orphan, Horace Robedaux, who ends up working as a laborer on a sugar plantation and befriends the prisoners who work the fields.
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