User reviews

"Jasper, Texas" recounts the events surrounding the horrible killing-by-dragging of a black man by three white men near the title town which shocked America in 1998. This Showtime product exercises restraint in exploiting and sensationalizing the tragic crime while focusing on a small town trying to cope with finding itself at the center of national attention as media, FBI, Black Panthers, and the KKK converge on it. Voight and Gossett turn in solid performances as the town's Sheriff and Mayor respectively in this thin story with little extraordinary drama beyond the headlines. Somewhat weak as a stand-alone feature, "Jasper, Texas" will play best for those with a particular interest in the infamous Jasper story. (B-)

Texas is a big, big state. There is plenty of room for racism to exist in any places at once. In 1998, there were two big incidents that made national headlines.

Near the Louisiana border, in Jasper, Texas. James Byrd was being drug to his death by three white men out for a good time. 600 miles away, near the New Mexico border, in Tulia, Texas, the sheriff hired Tome Coleman to combat his town's perceived drug problem. As the trials went on in Jasper, a pre-dawn raid rounded up 46 black men in Tulia and they were sentenced to 750 years in prison on trumped-up charges.

We will have to wait until Halle Berry has her baby to see the completion of Tulia, but we can watch the crimes in Jasper, now.

Louis Gossett Jr. plays the Mayor of Jasper, and Jon Voight is the Sheriff. They have to deal with the impact of the crime and the trial on a town of 8,000. They are not only ill prepared to investigate such a heinous murder, but they have to deal with the Black Panthers, who arrive to march armed (legal in Texas), and the KKK. I cannot think of two actors who were better suited for the parts, and could have played them better.

The overall message of the film is that these three men were not representative of the town - that blacks and whites got along. The truth was laid bare during the trial. They got along because the black citizens did not make waves. There was an undercurrent of racism throughout the community and it took an incident like this to get the town to look at it.

It is a shame that it took a death to make things better, but James Byrd did have what is hopefully a lasting legacy on the town.

This is one to watch again. Jon Voight carries this film with his offbeat character and does not disappoint. A tragic tale that exposes what all know is already there. Racism. I have never written a review before but I was compelled by this movie to create an account just to have a say. Could have been more focused on the victim and his story. Good job on the atmosphere in this. Gritty Texas with all the warts and open sores.

What a horrible incident! I don't agree with my state's (over)use of the death penalty, but somehow, I'm just fine with the fact that the perpetrators of this crime are going to get the death juice in a few years. The movie portrayal of the incident is sensitive and well-done. Louis Gossett, Jr. is awesome in this movie, which is an added bonus. I had an opportunity to be in the same room as R.C. Horn (long story), and he's almost a dead-ringer for Louis Gossett, Jr. Anyway, a great movie about a horrible incident.

A well told,well acted, dramatization of race relations in the South. Jon Vought and Lou Gosset Jr, are excellent.

In 1998 three young White men killed James Byrd, Jr., a Black man, by chaining Byrd to the back of their pickup truck, and then driving away at high speed down a back road in rural deep East Texas. It was a horrible crime, one that was quickly and easily solved. This film tells the story of that real-life event ... sort of.

The best part of "Jasper, Texas" is the performance of Jon Voight, as sheriff Billy Rowles, who investigated the crime. The film also presents a credibly downbeat atmosphere of rural eastern Texas.

That said, I was disappointed with the screenplay. The story begins on the day after the killing and, except for occasional flashbacks, moves forward, to chronicle the aftermath of the event, from the viewpoint of the town's residents. What was a terrible personal tragedy is turned into a speech-athon on race relations from: local politicians, the FBI, a citizen's task force, the Black Panthers, a White supremacy group, and others. The film's cast is way too large, and the dialogue is inflated. And throughout this talky film, there's the usual obnoxious behavior of the vulturous news media.

We never really get to know James Byrd, Jr., ... the victim. He is almost irrelevant. Nor do we get any insight into the motivations of the three killers. The film thus mostly ignores the most relevant people, and chooses instead to tell the story of background people who talk endlessly around a sociology topic that has been talked to death. The entire film seemed academic, impersonal, and emotionally uninvolved.

This is a kind of made for cable TV film that I can imagine was trailed every 15 minutes in the run up to its first showing. The shocking true story of the murder of James Byrd jr in 1998 when he was chained to the back of a pickup truck and dragged through the roads in Jasper, East Texas. Byrd was black and his murderers were three white men.

Obviously this was a horrific crime, the drama is interspersed with news footage of politicians commenting on this even including President Bill Clinton.

Jon Voight plays the considerate and wily Sheriff Billy Rowles who investigates the crime and finds the assailants rather quickly. Louis Gossett jr is the town mayor.

However we get to know little about the victim. Its rather hinted from early scenes that he had been a bad boy in the past and in other scenes it was alleged that he was a drug dealer. We also do not find out why the young guys decided to commit such a crime.

We see footage of the drag scenes in flashback, obviously the filmmakers decide to tread the line by not being too exploitative but there are some graphic scenes of the aftermath.

The film turns to the examination of how the events caused waves to the town, where racism was hidden and the events brought the media as well as the Black Panthers and the Ku Klux Klan into the town and turn it into a powder keg. We also have the case reaching the court as the men stand trial.

Yet this part of the story is rather uninteresting and perfunctory. Its very much highlights the flaws of these type of made for cable TV films. A shocking true event turned into a true movie of the week in a sanitized way. The budget is blown in getting the services of two Oscar winning actors but the production is sub par with lacklustre cinematography.

Aside from the Lifetime comparison this is a pretty decent dramatization of the terrible crime in Jasper. Really believable performances by both Jon Voight (with quite a believable Southern accent, similar to Bill Clinton's) and Louis Gossett, Jr. This would probably have been much more intense as a major motion picture theatrical release, but it's worth checking out as it is. In a couple of brief scenes, the film interjects real news clips of Bill Clinton and others speaking about the incident.

Ever since 1998 when I was told the details of this murder just a few days after it happened, I have tried to piece together the story, but this film tells every angle well, but leaves us with the question of whether the two main perpetrators would be killed for their crimes or not. They were killed after all, the third man, who just went along for the ride, is in prison until 2038. Films like this are important because the Lost Cause Narrative is still being taught to children, and it has to stop. It, too, has to be put to death by a lethal injection of love and truth. By the way, the accents for the white people are not accurate.

I was a junior in high school when the true story behind Jasper occurred, but I don't remember much of it. Until I saw this movie, the horrific nature of the crime hadn't hit me, and I became disgusted with the racism that does still exist. While this was certainly no blockbuster, I found this movie meaningful and it really delivered a message to me.

Also, not to make light of the story, I'm from Deep East Texas, and I have NEVER heard anybody from the area use that Deep South accent. I agree that we do have a distinctive accent, but I am somewhat offended that somebody else could review this movie and say that the accent was actually authentic--that is as far from the truth as you can get. We don't talk like the characters on "In the Heat of the Night," we talk like rednecks--and to us, that's not an insult.