Dead Man Walking

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Starring: Susan Sarandon

Dead man walking is the story of a spiritual woman (Sr. Helen Prejean) who embarks on a dangerous journey with a convicted killer (Matthew Poncelot) and the profound changes it makes in her life. Confronted with the anger of the community and the private pain of the victims’ parents. Sr. Helen Prejean overcomes her own fears to fight for the life and soul of Matthew Poncelot.

One of the main characters in the movie was a man by the name of Matthew Poncelot. Too me Poncelot was a very smart man. Before the movie started Matthew Poncelot had been in prison for four years instead of just sitting in his cell doing nothing he got every law book he could get his hands on and learnt every trick so he could file a appeal and get close to a good chance of winning. At the start of the movie I thought that Poncelot was innocent because of the way he presented himself to Sr. Helen and how cunning he was in the way that he made himself look innocent by reading all the law books and proclaiming his innocence. As the movie unfolded I found that my prediction was to be incorrect due to Poncelot’s behavior towards Sr. Helen and his mannerism as the movie goes on as well as the movie shows flash backs of the night and glimpses of Poncelot’s face.

It must have taken great amounts of courage for Sr. Helen to confront a murder-rapist in his own environment in prison. Too me Sr. Helen played all her cards well, although she got the slack and abuse of everyone in the community she did what was best and that was to make Poncelot confess his guilt.

The other main characters that suffered a lot through the whole ordeal were the victims’ parents. Though the whole movie they show little sections of how the family are feeling and how they overcome the whole problem. The movie also portrays how the parents feel towards the murderer and rapist Matthew Poncelot.

The whole movie was based on justice and will Matthew Poncelot get what he deserves and that is the death penalty. Sure this is justice because of what happened but his friend should have got the same sentence. It was because Poncelot was poor that he couldn’t afford a good enough lawyer to give his client a fair trial.

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