As this is a true story, it is an awful story indeed. Its is masterfully recaptured and reconstructed, from the smallest details and the advent of the chief protagonist, a young greengrocer from Sicily and his first arduous trials and horrible experiences of American justice, developed incident by incident to the last apocalyptic atrocities in the very heart of New Orleans in 1891, Theodore Roosevelt himself expressing his approval of the gross outrage. The camera work is admirable all the way, the story of the main crook James Houston (Christopher Walken) with his intrigues and shadowy manoeuvres is gradually revealed, and the creation of this extremely important film must be highly admired and praised. It strikes the very heart and core of the lynching mentality in a fabulously precise anatomy of this dreadful phenomenon, which unfortunately always has been marked as typically American. It is a horrible film of injustice running amuck to extreme length, but as such it is vitally important. Yet it was only a TV film, and the title is totally misplaced - the one thing missing here is any vendetta.
