Category: Black Cinema Database

Release Date:  8/13/1990 (TV Movie)
Genre:   Drama
Rating:   R
Director:  Kevin Hooks
Studio(s):   Avnet/Kerner Productions, Propaganda Films, TNT, Turner Home Entertainment
Running Time:  100 mins.

Cast:  Blair Underwood (Robert Richardson), Cicely Tyson (Ruthana Richardson), James Earl Jones (Junius Johnson), Margaret Avery (Roxie Turpin), David Strathairn (Bill Thomas), Glenn Plummer (J.T. Turpin), Vondie Curtis-Hall (Clifford Turpin), Adam Arkin (Art Berman).

Story:   Heat Wave is a television movie about the 1965 riots in the Watts section of Los Angeles. It recreates the experiences of Bob Richardson, a young Los Angeles Times messenger who covered the riots and subsequently became the paper’s first African-American reporter.

As a teen, Richardson (Blair Underwood) comes from the South to Los Angeles with his best friend J.T.  (Glenn Plummer) and his parents (Vondie Curtis-Hall and Margaret Avery) to stay at the home of his grandmother (Cicely Tyson), who works as a housekeeper in Beverly Hills.  But they soon learn that Los Angeles is not a place of racial harmony as they had hoped, but rather they face the same sort of discrimination and oppression they had known at home.  They are hassled by cops and chased by white gangs. Unable to find work as a construction foreman, his former profession, Curtis-Hall settles for work as a janitor and salves his wounded pride with liquor.  Similarly, after Plummer`s ambition to become an airline pilot is thwarted by a school counselor, he winds up in a car wash with a half-pint in his pocket.  Underwood`s character, enlists in the Army, goes to college and gets a job as a messenger with the Los Angeles Times.

When the riot erupts, precipitated by a hassle between a white cop and two black men over a traffic violation, Richardson is sent to report from the scene, because, we are told, white reporters are being attacked. He does his job, but his stories, which first reflect the looting and arson, infuriate some of the neighbors.

When the riot is finally quelled, with the help of 14,500 National Guardsmen, the toll is substantial: 35 dead, 1,200 injured, 4,000 arrested, $200 million in damage and 600 buildings burned or looted.

The Los Angeles Times won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the riots and the man on whom the Richardson character was based became the paper`s first black reporter trainee.  Other sources indicate that the real-life Richardson’s career reportedly went from the Times to small radio stations to homelessness.  Source:  Wikipedia; Chicagotribune.com; Daarac.org; TCM.

Trailer:

Release Date:   1/23/10
Genre:  Drama
Rating:  R
Director:   Tanya Hamilton
Studio(s):  SimonSays Entertainment, Gigantic Pictures, Magnolia Pictures.
Running Time:  90 mins.

Cast:  Kerry Washington (Patricia), Anthony Mackie (Marcus), Jamie Hector (DoRight Miller), Wendell Pierce (David Gordon), Amari Cheatom (Jimmy Dixon), Tariq Trotter (Bostic Washington), Novella Nelson (Eloise), Thomas Roy (Old Man Harrison), Ron Simons (Carey Ford).

Story:  In 1976 former Black Panther Marcus, returns to his Philadelphia neighborhood to attend his father’s funeral. Marcus has been away for several years, part of the time spent in prison on gun running charges and part spent wandering the country.  Marcus has a reputation for having snitched on a fellow Panther which led to his death when the police tried to arrest him. Marcus’s former friend DoRight, now a local gangster, and Marcus’s brother Bostic, a Black Muslim, are especially displeased by his return.

However, Patricia, the widow of the slain Panther, is more welcoming. She is now a lawyer and lives with her daughter Iris in the same house where her husband was killed. Her younger cousin Jimmy struggles to make a living with odd jobs, and becomes more enamored of the Panthers after being harassed by the police. Increasingly hostile to the police, he becomes involved when some men sent by DoRight shoot out the back window of a police car.

Meanwhile, although no one else can understand it, Patricia grows closer to Marcus and when he is kicked out of his brother’s home she invites him to stay with her, citing that he will be a positive male influence for her daughter. When Iris grows curious about what happened to her father, Patricia tearfully explains how he had murdered a police officer in retaliation for the killing of two Panthers. She explains that the police arrested her and Marcus tells Iris that he told them where her father was in order to save Patricia from going to jail and keep Iris out of the foster care system.

Wanting to hold DoRight responsible for the shooting of the police car, but lacking evidence, police officer David Gordon orders Marcus to plant a gun in DoRight’s bar so they can arrest him. Marcus is reluctant, but Gordon insists, threatening to reveal to the neighborhood that it was actually Patricia who had informed on her husband’s location and that Marcus had taken the heat for her. Marcus goes to DoRight’s bar but refuses to plant the gun.

Meanwhile, Jimmy, who has bought a gun and decked himself out in Panther style beret and jacket, approaches the cop who had harassed him earlier, and shoots him. Jimmy flees to his cousin’s house, but when the police show up outside she forces him to leave. Later, the police find Jimmy hiding in a wooded area and shoot him. After this, Marcus asks Patricia to leave Philly with him and put the past behind her. She refuses, and he leaves alone.  Source(s):  Wikipedia; IMDB; Hollywood.com; Listal.com.

Trailer: