Brothers USA

Original: Brothers 1977

Start 03.08.1977 US-Start
Regie Arthur Barron
Darst Ron O'Neal, John Zaremba, Bernie Casey, John Lehne, Vonetta McGee, Stu Gilliam, Renny Roker
Text David Thomas (BERNIE CASEY), an ordinary black man, is arrested in Los Angeles as an accessory to a robbery of a gas station. He pleads innocent but is persuaded to plead guilty in exchange for what he thinks will be a light sentence. Thomas is given a one-year to life term, expecting parole within nine months. He becomes a model prisoner but his parole is denied. Angered by the treatment of inmates at the segregated prison, Thomas is taught to channel his fury into more productive areas by a fellow convict, Walter Nance (RON O'NEAL). He educates himself by studying Paine, Guevara, Fanon, Hugo and Gorki. He starts an underground newspaper and begins to fight back and resist. His efforts win him two years in solitary confinement. Thomas's case comes to the attention of a beautiful, radical, controversial, black professor named Paula Jones (VONETTA McGEE). Through brief, monitored meetings in prison and prolonged correspondence, they fall passionately in love. When Thomas's brother, Lewis, (RENNY ROKER) is killed in a courthouse shootout while using Paula's gun, she is accused of murder, tried, and sent to prison. She and Thomas continue to correspond until Thomas is killed in a prison-break set-up designed to eliminate him before he can implicate the prison guards responsible for a killing for which he has been accused. After his death, Paula Jones is acquitted and released from prison.
Poster