The Suspect: Movie Analysis
Pamela Rhodes
SOC 101
14 April 2015
The Suspect The movie starts out in a small southern rural town of Midland with Sheriff Dixon listening to the radio as it talks about how Carolina Credit and Trust Bank had been robbed earlier that day in the all-white town. The suspect happens to be a college professor running a social experiment on the racial dynamics and bias in small town law enforcement. In the experiment Mekhi Phifer and Sterling K. Brown play the roles of the social scientists running a high leveled participant observation experiment. William Sadler plays the role of Sheriff Dixon. Derek Roché plays the role of Deputy Riley who is Sheriff Dixon’s sidekick throughout the movie. In the experiment one of the social scientists robs …show more content…
Sheriff Dixon doesn’t have any evidence that it was Phifer that robbed in the bank. Sheriff Dixon’s daughter then asks him why he’s holding Phifer in a jail cell for no reason other than the color of his skin being black. Brown is on his way to the police department where they are holding Phifer when he stops at a gas station and encounters a white couple. This couple takes offense to Brown locking his car doors before entering the store so they decide to slash his tires. Brown returns to the vehicle and drives off not knowing that he will run his car off a cliff down the road due to this. Phifer suspects something has gone wrong so is forced to explain the experiment alone to the Midland police department. They doubt his story. He figured they would so he then explains how he buried an “insurance policy” at the real estate he had been looking at earlier that …show more content…
When she arrives Dixon already had put together a lineup of pictures with very familiar faces trying to coerce her into saying that it was Phifer. As the woman proceeds to look through the lineup she states to the sheriff that she see what he’s doing. This is like how public defenders try to coerce African-Americans into taking plea bargains because they’d rather plea to a lesser charger where they’re not in jail for a longer sentence. This is due to the fact that the system is bombarded with cases these lawyers pressure African Americans to take these plea deals because they usually don’t have the finances for a lawyer that will prove their
SOC 101
14 April 2015
The Suspect The movie starts out in a small southern rural town of Midland with Sheriff Dixon listening to the radio as it talks about how Carolina Credit and Trust Bank had been robbed earlier that day in the all-white town. The suspect happens to be a college professor running a social experiment on the racial dynamics and bias in small town law enforcement. In the experiment Mekhi Phifer and Sterling K. Brown play the roles of the social scientists running a high leveled participant observation experiment. William Sadler plays the role of Sheriff Dixon. Derek Roché plays the role of Deputy Riley who is Sheriff Dixon’s sidekick throughout the movie. In the experiment one of the social scientists robs …show more content…
Sheriff Dixon doesn’t have any evidence that it was Phifer that robbed in the bank. Sheriff Dixon’s daughter then asks him why he’s holding Phifer in a jail cell for no reason other than the color of his skin being black. Brown is on his way to the police department where they are holding Phifer when he stops at a gas station and encounters a white couple. This couple takes offense to Brown locking his car doors before entering the store so they decide to slash his tires. Brown returns to the vehicle and drives off not knowing that he will run his car off a cliff down the road due to this. Phifer suspects something has gone wrong so is forced to explain the experiment alone to the Midland police department. They doubt his story. He figured they would so he then explains how he buried an “insurance policy” at the real estate he had been looking at earlier that …show more content…
When she arrives Dixon already had put together a lineup of pictures with very familiar faces trying to coerce her into saying that it was Phifer. As the woman proceeds to look through the lineup she states to the sheriff that she see what he’s doing. This is like how public defenders try to coerce African-Americans into taking plea bargains because they’d rather plea to a lesser charger where they’re not in jail for a longer sentence. This is due to the fact that the system is bombarded with cases these lawyers pressure African Americans to take these plea deals because they usually don’t have the finances for a lawyer that will prove their