A time to kill is an American drama film produced in 1996 by Arnon Milchan, John Grisham, Michael Nathanson and Hunt Lowry (Ebert 1).it depicts how racial discrimination affected social life in America. It is based on the novel ‘A time to Kill’, written by John Grisham in 1989. The film revolves around a black family, father and daughter who are living in Mississippi, and two white men who are racists. Tonya the black young girl is aged ten years. She was seized by Doug Hutchinson and Nicky Katt who raped her in turns. The men also beat her up before trying to hang her; however, their attempt was unsuccessful. At the end of their brutal act, they threw her into the nearby river. The girl survived the ordeal. The rapists were arrested by the police. The girl’s father, Carl Lee Hailey learned through a lawyer, Jack Brigance, that there was a high likelihood that the rapists would not be punished. Carl Lee resorted to deal with the rapists himself to ensure that justice was done to her daughter. He shot the men with a rifle in the courthouse. He was arrested for the offence of murder and Jack Brigance volunteered to defend him (Ebert 1). This paper analyses how the film treats the moral issue.
Analysis of the Moral Issue
This film teaches about racial discrimination in the American societies. The film is set during the time when racism and racists acts were very high in America (Ebert 1). The black people were treated with contempt by the white people. There was no particular reason for such hatred. This aspect is brought out through the character of Tonya. The girl was very young and had not provoked her rapists in any way, but because she was a black girl, the men felt that the only way to show their dislike was through subjecting her to sexual and physical assault. The rapists tried to hang the poor girl, and when they were defeated, they dumped her body in the river. This film was intended to provoke the distasteful discrimination practices of the whites against the blacks.
Racism did not stop with the rapists. The girls’ father, Carl Lee got angry and decided to kill her daughter’s offenders with a mixed motive. On one hand, he was seeking justice for his daughter for being raped and on the other hand, he felt bad because the rapists were not any other people, but whites. The judges who were determining the rape case were also white, and the film implies that they were going to favor the rapists because they were whites. They did not care about the rights of the black girl. At the trial, the good judge, Justice Omar Noose denied Carl’s lawyer to move the trial to a different location where he knew justice would be done to Carl. This court’s action was intended to show how the justice system was also used to discriminate against black people. The District Attorney sought death penalty for Carl, and this is questioned by Brigance at the trial during the closing arguments. Nicky Katt’s brother, Freddie Lee also threatened to revenge his brother’s death through violence, a situation which showed how acts of racism was a vicious circle of events emanating from blacks and whites alike.
However, the film’s writer gave hope to the situation when he made Jack Brigance, a white man to defend Carl Lee, a black man. Grisham intended to show that being racially discriminative was a matter of choice and everyone had the chance of choosing the right action; whether to be unreasonably discriminative against the black or be helpful to one another in the society. The acceptability of racial discrimination as depicted in the film is caused by the society. We see Brigance, a white man volunteering to defend Carl Lee, a black man and he goes ahead to question the jury during trial, if they could have punished Carl Lee with death penalty, if he were a white man. It is the reaction of the audience in court, which showed that, if Carl Lee was a white man, he would have not been subjected to the intended death penalty.
Work Cited
Ebert, Roger. "A Time To Kill Movie Review & Film Summary (1996) | Roger Ebert." Movie Reviews and Ratings by Film Critic Roger Ebert | Roger Ebert. N.p., 26 July 1996. Web. 19 May 2016.
