Convicts

Oscar winner Robert Duvall is unforgettable in this stylized drama co-starring Lukas Haas and James Earl Jones. Adapted to the screen by Horton Foote and ably directed by Peter Masterson, Convicts is at once engrossing, poignant and heartrending. In 1902 rural Texas, 13 year-old Horace (Haas) toils on a run-down plantation to buy a tombstone for the father he lost a year earlier. Soll (Duvall) the crusty old Confederate who owns the plantation, has yet to pay the boy a penny of the money he owes him. But on Christmas Eve, as Soll becomes obsessed with his own mortality, he makes a grand promise... forcing Horace to confront his fear of death and the harsh truths of a decadent society.