Butler's Cinema Scene

Jack O’Connell, Laura Dern

“TRIAL BY FIRE” My rating: B

127 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Familiarity breeds contempt. But given the right circumstances, it can breed compassion and understanding as well.

Edward Zwick’s “Trial by Fire” is a fact-based film inspired by the story of Todd Willingham, who was convicted of setting a fire that killed his three young daughters and executed by the state.

As protagonists go, Willingham is at first a hard man to care about. But by the time this gut-wrencher has come to its conclusion that proposition will be turned inside out.

The film opens in 1991 with Willingham (Jack O’Connell) crawling from his burning house in small-town Texas. He grabs a  jack from the trunk of his car and uses it to break the window of his daughters’ bedroom.  For his efforts he is very nearly incinerated by an erupting fireball.

Wellingham is arrested on the drive back from his childrens’ funeral.  The experts say the fire was deliberately started. Which makes this a case of murder.

And, frankly, the portrait of Willingham that emerges only cements his guilt.  For he is one unlikeable individual, a sort of white trash poster boy who beat and cheated on his wife Stacy (“The Deuce’s” Emily Meade), who drank and brawled and was known to have lied to the cops in the past.

His court-appointed attorney mounts not even a half-hearted defense, and in short order he’s on Death Row.

Geoffrey Fletcher’s screenplay (based on David Grann’s New Yorker article) dispenses with the nuts and bolts of the case in the first half hour.  The bulk of the film depicts how while awaiting execution Willingham finds his better self.

Jack O’Connell

He befriends a fellow Death Row resident (McKinley Belcher III) who initially taunts him for being a child killer but later recognizes how much Willingham loved his kids.  This fellow inmate also serves as a sort of sardonic Greek chorus when it comes to examining the ins and outs of capital punishment.  (“You got no capital, you get punished.”)  He also notes that twice as many executions take place during election years.

A similar arc unfolds in his relationship with a prison guard (Chris Coy) so outraged by Willingham’s crime that he routinely beats the prisoner senseless. As the years pass the two enemies come to a certain level of mutual respect.

But the real meat of the drama is provided by Laura Dern as Liz Gilbert, a writer who stumbles across Willingham’s case almost by accident and, convinced of his innocence, begins a campaign to re-examine the evidence and the proceedings of a clearly prejudicial court.

The final minutes of “Trial by Fire” are a nail biter. As Willingham’s execution draws ever closer, the prosecution’s case starts to fall apart, what with perjured witnesses and less-than-reliable expert testimony. (Jeff Perry makes a scene-stealing appearance late in the proceedings as a world-class arson expert Liz asks to review the evidence.)

“Trial by Fire” is not easy watching, but those who stick with it will be rewarded by several fine performances and a fierce conviction that the death penalty is so often wrongly imposed that the whole system is fatally flawed.

Oh, by the way…despite what appears to be overwhelming evidence, the State  of Texas has yet to admit that it executed an innocent man.

| Robert W. Butler