Clemency

Alfre Woodard gives an award worthy performance in this stark and depressing movie about capital punishment.

I know there are arguments for and against capital punishment, and I'm not entirely sure where I land on the subject, though I'm much more against than for. I do know that every time I actually see or read something about what's involved to actually put someone to death, it leaves me almost nauseated. "Clemency" opens with the execution by lethal injection of a death row prisoner, and it's incredibly disturbing to watch. To know that there's a whole system and process that exists for the sole purpose of ending the life of another human being just feels wrong, no matter what arguments there may be on the other side. This film obviously thinks so too, and doesn't even attempt to address any other point of view.

It's an awfully uneven movie. The scenes set in the prison that show Woodard's warden character battling with the inhumanity her role asks of her are very good. But the domestic scenes that detail her troubled relationship with her husband and a long scene involving two other characters (a man condemned to death, played by Aldis Hodge, and the mother of his child) veer off into clunky melodrama.

A good but not great film, most worth watching for Woodard's performance.

Grade: B+