Blood Done Sign My Name (film)

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Blood Done Sign My Name
Blood Done Sign My Name.jpg
Directed by Jeb Stuart
Written byJeb Stuart
Based on Blood Done Sign My Name
by Timothy Tyson
Produced by Mel Efros
David Martin
Jeb Stuart
Mari Stuart
Starring Ricky Schroder
Omar Benson Miller
Michael Rooker
Nate Parker
Cinematography Steve Mason
Edited by Toby Yates
Music byJohn Leftwich
Production
company
Distributed by Paladin
Release date
  • February 19, 2010 (2010-02-19)
Running time
128 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

Blood Done Sign My Name is a 2010 American drama film written and directed by Jeb Stuart and starring Ricky Schroder, Omar Benson Miller, Michael Rooker, and Nate Parker. It is based on the autobiographical book Blood Done Sign My Name (2004) by historian Timothy Tyson.

Contents

Plot

In Oxford, North Carolina, the county seat of a tobacco district, a black Vietnam-era veteran is beaten in 1970 by three white men, and shot dead by one of them. An all-white jury acquits the two defendants who were indicted.

The plot focuses on two characters: a local African-American high-school teacher, who recently returned to the town from college and organizes the black community to march to the state capital to protest the unjust verdict, and a white minister, who loses much of his congregation because of his racially-liberal views during the Civil Rights Era.

Cast

Reception

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 52% based on 29 reviews, and an average rating of 5.8/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Even among civil rights movies, Blood Done Sign My Name is remarkably earnest, but its big heart can't cover for the bland acting and TV-style melodrama that blunts the movie's impact." [1] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 49 out of 100, based on 16 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". [2]

A. O. Scott of The New York Times admired the film's ambitions, but said that "Mr. Stuart's evident desire to respect the truth of the story in all its details leaves him without a clear, emphatic dramatic structure." [3]

See also

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References

  1. "Blood Done Sign My Name (2010)". Rotten Tomatoes . Fandango Media . Retrieved March 16, 2018.
  2. "Blood Done Sign My Name Reviews". Metacritic . CBS Interactive . Retrieved March 16, 2018.
  3. A. O. Scott, "A Town Torn Asunder by Racial Killing in ’70", The New York Times, 18 February 2010; accessed 13 June 2018