Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 0014381590227
Format: Color, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC
Label: Image Entertainment
Manufacturer: Image Entertainment
Number Of Items: 1
Picture Format: Pan & Scan
Publisher: Image Entertainment
Release Date: November 30, 1999
Running Time: 112 minutes
Sales Rank: 142608
Studio: Image Entertainment
Theatrical Release Date: 1998
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Editorial Review:
Description:
A pretty little town. An ugly little secret. From the director of 'Where the Rivers Flow North' comes a powerful thriller in the vein of 'Legends of the Fall' and 'A River Runs Through It,' based on a Howard Frank Mosher novel. Named one of the best films of the year by Stuff Magazine, 'A Stranger in the Kingdom' stars Ernie Hudson (Ghostbusters), Jean Louisa Kelly (Uncle Buck) and Academy Award Winner Martin Sheen (Apocalypse Now).
Amazon.com:
Jay Craven has made a little niche for himself in dramas of the American Midwest. His 1993 sleeper Where the Rivers Flow North chronicles the standoff between the WPA and a defiant Vermont farmer during the depression. Stranger in the Kingdom, adapted from the novel by Howard Frank Mosher, finds Craven back in Vermont, circa 1952, where a sleepy little town is awakened by the arrival of worldly black pastor Ernie Hudson, fresh from 15 years of service as an Army chaplain. The community doesn't take to their new two-fisted moral policeman, and tongues wag when he takes in a sexy young French Canadian mail-order maid fleeing from her abusive household. When she's murdered the community points its fingers to the minister. As long as the film stays with Hudson, it's a compelling portrait of small-town provincialism turned ugly, but the film's real protagonist is hometown attorney David Lansbury, a fun-loving scamp who confronts his own arrested adolescence while defending Hudson in a Perry Mason-like climax. The film loses its complexity as it turns whodunit, but until then it's a richly populated, well-sketched portrait of rural paradise polluted by ignorance and hate, beautifully shot in autumnal colors. Sean Nelson (Fresh) costars as the minister's son, and Martin Sheen and Henry Gibson appear as attorneys for the prosecution. --Sean Axmaker
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - good film, definitely worth a rental if you're interested
The third in Jay Craven's series of film adaptations of Howard Frank Mosher novels (the others are 'High Water' (1991), 'Where the Rivers Flow North' (1993), and the upcoming 'Disappearances'.) By far Craven's darkest film to date, telling a story of murder and racism in a small, backwards Vermont town, c. 1950. A nice piece of cinema which is at once both a compelling drama and a well executed whodunit, featuring top-drawer performances (particularly Rusty DeWees, Bill Raymond, and Ernie Hudson.), and an appropriately eerie score by the Horse Flies. Not entirely faithful to the book, but how many films are? Worth at least a rental from anybody who likes a good drama.
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