User Reviews

Deadline is my kind of movie, a heartfelt story that moved me to tears on several occasions. By the end, I was so thankful that I'd seen Deadline because it gave me hope for the future. Deadline tells the story of two investigative reporters, played by odd-couple Eric Roberts and Steve Talley, who get turned on to a cold case civil rights murder. Based on a true story, it has elements that are reminiscent of Ghosts of Mississippi and Mississippi Burning, but ultimately Deadline reminded me most of To Kill a Mockingbird. It's a story of race in the South and manages to show both how far we've come and how far we still have to go as a nation. Rather than dwell on the actual murder, Deadline focuses on the human toll of such crimes. The mother and the girlfriend of the slain black teenager are both permanently scarred by his murder, and that's not all of their pain. The entire town has never recovered from the murder. In some ways, Deadline is similar to the current Trayvon Martin case, or the recent murders in Tulsa, giving it a timeliness that is almost surreal. But then I guess that's the point, since such things do seem to happen with distressing regularity. By the end of Deadline, I felt that such crimes may not have to always be part of our national ethos, that there is indeed hope that we can evolve as a people, that we may one day not have to seek justice, but simply be just in the first place.