Also a while ago, and also on Tubi, I saw the 1997 historical drama called
Rosewood which was about the 1923 Rosewood Massacre which was widely reported at the time, but then basically memoryholed for the next sixty or seventy years. John Singleton directed this film and despite his reputation from Kevin Smith's Superman story, Jon Peters was the only Producer on this film.
I remember hearing about this film a while back and from the trailers and posters I saw, it looked like some kinda mindless action movie with a historical dressing since it all showed the primary star, Ving Rhames, dueling akimbo pistols while looking all ripped and badass like
some contemporary Gangster film but outside of a few bits, it was nothing like that at all.
It was a surprisingly good movie and a visceral, violent one too. It took its time setting up the scene, the context, the settings and locations and characters and then showed what could've been the catalyst and how it quickly metasized out of control. The main story is about Ving Rhames' character, a WWI veteran who is looking to purchase property in Rosewood. He meets the Carrier family, a rather successful Black family in the Black town of Rosewood led by a strong Matriarch who spent much of her time as a Nanny to many White children in her younger years (children who grew up into adults by the time of the film). Jon Vought portrays a White shopkeeper in Rosewood, who some White folks accuse of "growing rich off of selling things to Blacks" and whose cheating on his Wife with a Black employee.
Some of the interesting minor characters include some Black and White Freemasons, a Black Pastor of the local 'Methodist' Church of Rosewood, Michael Rooker as the Sheriff whose up for re-election, and Don Cheadle as the eldest Son of the Carrier family. And Bruce McGill who portrays one of the worst people in the world as one of the Posse leaders.
Long story short, this film (dramatically reinterprets) the events of the Rosewood Massacre where an escaped Black Inmate was alleged to have assaulted (not raped or sexually assaulted) a White woman and who was aided or hiding out in the nearby Black community of Rosewood. As the story carries out, the story is embellished and anger is inflamed White posses rally up and while there are some very visible reservations and doubts and even resistance to the whole affair, the violence quickly spirals out of control. Some of the Black population think they should stand and fight, others think it'll blow over after a few days, and some just want to flee.
There's lynchings. There's gun battles and sieges between Black residents and White posses. As the violence and body count (for both sides) rises, it just grow more and more out of control. Towards the final stages of the film your just wondering how everyone is going to get through their situations. How risky some of the choices and decisions some people are making. And how ruthless or pragmatic people have to be to survive or just are to their neighbors who they were quite amicable with just days ago. There's also class conflicts, both with rich and poor whites, and rich and poor Blacks. Locals and outsiders etc.
Towards the end it suffers from becoming almost too much of an 'action movie' like I feared, but it's a minor issue considering the context of the scene. The main drawback of this film is similar to say Stanley Kubrick's criticism of the amazing Holocaust film
Schindlers List. That film was about the Holocaust, but the main plot, in spite of all of the brutality, could still be considered a triumph of Humanity since Schindler saved hundreds of lives, when the Holocaust was actually a tragedy resulting in millions of deaths.
The scale here is far, far, far smaller and the violence more spontaneous and short term, but there is a bit of a triumphalism towards the end of the film which kind of ruins the atmosphere and mood considering all of the events that led up to the end. But it's a minor quibble all considered. Good movie, would recommend.
If you build a setting around a certain nemesis and adversarial relationship, it's hard to move on. I think that Babylon 5 might have more intrinsic potential of course since while the Shadow-Vorlon Conflict was a big deal, the Younger Races were allowed to continue to forge their own destiny now. In Halo and Wing Commander it was so focused on the Humans versus an Alien Empire that what came after just wasn't something that interested people. While in Mass Effect, the stakes would never be as high as the Reaper Invasion.
