Mark Reviews Movies: TRIAL BY FIRE

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 16, 2019

There's a fairly pragmatic argument against the death penalty made by Trial by Fire. The film is based on the true story of a man who was executed by the state of Texas after being convicted of the murders of his three children. He maintained his innocence until his death by lethal injection, and shortly before the sentence was imposed, new evidence came to light that pretty much asserted the police investigation into the supposed crime was erroneous, as it was based on forensic evidence that had almost no foundation in actual science.

The film's case against the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham is clear, and by extension, screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher and director Edward Zwick's argument against capital punishment is also obvious. If one man was executed for a crime he didn't commit, the system has failed. If this happened to one man, then it almost certainly happened to other people, and if that, as it most likely is, is true, the entire system is faulty.

There is no rational, emotional, or moral counterpoint of any legitimacy to this argument. In any other case, to kill an innocent person for no reason almost certainly would be considered murder. To come up with an excuse for the killing doesn't change a thing. In 30 states across the country, the government's act of killing people, who reasonably could be innocent and who have had an entire system invent reasons to carry through with the killing, is considered a form of justice.

Willingham, who goes by Todd in the film, is played by Jack O'Connell. The story begins with the deaths of Todd's three children—a toddler and twin infants—in a fire, as their father rushes out of the house and attempts to break through the girls' bedroom window. The police suspect arson and investigate the scene with that prejudicial view in mind. Todd is arrested, and his trial is defined by contradictory testimony and a thoroughly botched defense. He's still found guilty and sentenced to death.

From here, the film does a few things—most of them expected and some of them better than others. We see what life is like on death row, with inmates waiting for the date of their death to bet set and trying to encourage those making the penultimate walk to an observation cell to keep their heads up. Todd is regularly abused by a particular prison guard (played by Chris Coy), who, in one of the film's more effective series of scenes, eventually starts to question his charge's guilt—going from calling Todd "baby-killer" to calling him "brother."

The most significant relationship here is between Todd and Elizabeth Gilbert (Laura Dern), a playwright from Houston who volunteers to write to the inmate and visit him. At first, she has no reason to believe that he's innocent of the crime for which he has been convicted, but after spending some time talking and listening to him, she suspects that his pleas are genuine.

This begins a race against the clock, which goes through the usual depiction of bureaucratic necessities and obstacles. Along the way, Elizabeth questions those who testified at the trial, including a cellmate who claimed that Todd confessed to him and Todd's wife Stacy (Emily Meade), whose testimony about her husband's abusive past overshadowed her judicially unofficial declarations that he would never hurt his children (Another unexpected detail is how the relationship between Todd and Stacy fades, before going right back into its old ways during her first and only visit in a while, because, while people may change, it's not by much). Fletcher, working from a New Yorker article by David Grann, makes it clear that someone as impoverished as Todd easily can be railroaded by the justice system, thanks to state-appointed attorneys who either are overwhelmed or have stopped caring.

Such details are vital to the film's central argument, and they're presented with clarity and, because the case is too obvious to need it, without any political grandstanding. The heart of the film, though, rests between the after-conviction investigation. It's in showing and exploring the basic level of human decency between Todd and Elizabeth. There's a real connection here, based on such simple things as conversations about daily routines and as challenging things as empathy. Under such circumstances, such things may be all that we can offer, but they're also, perhaps, all that we require.

Zwick ends his film with footage of a Presidential debate, in which Rick Perry, who was governor at the time of Willingham's execution and allegedly ignored the exculpatory evidence, goes through a series of tortured attempts to explain away the possibility that innocent people have been or could be executed by his state's government. His case is, at best, incompetent and, at worst, immoral. Without using some broad and mean-spirited terms, it's almost impossible to describe the applause Perry receives, upon proudly announcing that Texas will continue to put people to death at higher numbers than any other state in the country.

That footage puts Trial by Fire in a different context. While watching the film, one might think that it's making the easiest and most obvious case against capital punishment that could be made. There's no challenge here—no test of the moral implications of a "justified" execution or of the philosophical notion of an eye for an eye. In this specific case, it's fairly apparent that capital punishment was wrong, plain and simple. Seeing Perry's tough but incoherent blabbering and hearing that clapping from the crowd, though, are all it takes to make one think that, maybe, we just need the simplest and clearest argument to be made.

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