Protraph Lack of good storyline.

Numerootno A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Spikeopath If solely judged on Tookie Williams during his prison years, Redemption is a cracker-jack piece of film. It drives from the heart a sincerity that here was a man, that basically unleashed gangland hell on America, who desperately craved redemption from his prison cell. He strives to do good, to help communities by way of education in book and oration form, but is the film heavily biased towards the redemptive angle? Is the monster side of Williams soft soaped? Sadly yes it is.We don't need to see continual violence thrust in our faces to know Williams was a very bad egg, but although we see staged flashbacks that break the heart and frighten us, director Vondie Curtis-Hall and writer J.T. Allen are fully committed to garnering empathy for the man. Of course on the flip-side of that, if they showed an abundance of violence perpetrated by Williams, then accusations of glorifying would surely have followed. Yet there has to be a balance, a balance that some film makers do find, but it isn't found here.Is it a story worth telling? Yes it is, of course, and with a superb and controlled performance by Jamie Foxx in the title role driving it forwards, it remains riveting throughout. However, when the dust settles and the end credits roll, what of the victims families blighted by Williams crimes? How must they have felt seeing Williams having a film made about him? A double edged sword movie for sure, artistically above average? Yes. Morally? Questionable. 6/10

kosmasp Jamie Foxx is very good and believable as Stan Tookie, the title character and main player here. The storyline follows through from beginning to the end (although the beginning is a bit weak compared to the rest of the movie).It's a shame then, that the film is just to strict when it comes to it's morality. Everyone sees something else in it, so it's a shame that you only get one side of the story. Only one possible solution. The director did the thinking for you and tells you how to feel about this story. It'd be better if he had some arguments against his own beliefs in the movie, because it just seems like a one way road ... if you haven't seen the movie you might be confused about what I'm talking about, but you will get it, once you watch the movie. And it's worth watching, for the aforementioned Jamie Foxx performance!

user-252 i am only 16 and always watch movies. My family gets dvds pretty much everyday so in my video shop i have literally seen nearly everyone. This one is different. It is a real & meaningful story leaving us thinking and learning more as the movie went by. For the people who live the life he grew up in, the meaning of the movie is something I'm sure they will think about. World Peace isn't going to happen overnight. We all know that. But to look at this mans awful life and know that if we keep on hating, we may lead the same life one day. if not us maybe our future children- thats scary. Stan Williams woke up his neighborhood to a life of crime and later did all he could to save them.. he is a hero and this movie touched my heart.

Doug Thorburn Although we can't be sure how much of the persona is real, Jamie Fox beautifully portrays Tookie Williams in this well-made film. Likewise, Lynn Whitfield plays the endearing journalist Barbara Becnel, who asks Tookie to provide information for her upcoming book on gang history. The roles, in the end, reverse, when Becnel realizes Tookie needs her help in delivering his message.The flaw in the movie, as in so many that portray addicts, is the failure to link convoluted thinking and misbehaviors to alcohol and other drug addiction. Tookie explains he helped start the Crips to "protect the neighborhood." Responding to Becnel's comment that it was a criminal enterprise from the start, Tookie replies that the cops weren't protecting anyone. "Either I was going to be a victim or a victimizer." However, he failed to note that he'd been doing drugs since at least age 13, when he sniffed glue, and didn't co-found the Crips until he was 18. And like most other hard-drug addicts, he was probably an early-stage alcoholic from the start.When Becnel asks, "How can you possibly justify shooting a man who looks just like you?" Williams responded, "At the core is an embedded sense of self-hate…you start to believe those…stereotypes…depicting that the majority of blacks are buffoons or functioning illiterates, promiscuous, violent, welfare recipients and criminals…You lash out at those individuals that fit those stereotypes…trying to obliterate those negative images." However, Tookie neglected to mention the alcohol and other drugs consumed in addictive quantities by most of those having such belief systems, including him in his prior life. Such drugs cause distortions of perception and memory in susceptible individuals, of which he is one. Nor did the movie forge the link between his sobriety and change of heart, which is crucial to understanding the man.He was too out-of-control for his mother, who took him to his father—whom he had never met—and who promptly abandoned him. While now eloquent and likable, he didn't remark on when he first used drugs—which may have been a period leading to his out-of-control behaviors.Becnel put her history aside when Tookie told her, "I don't want to leave my legacy here as simply being the co-founder of the Crips, if I can keep a kid from coming to this place…" He tells her he wants to right his wrongs by writing children's books and shooting not people, but videos, in which he would apologize for his part in creating the Crips. "I deeply regret the legacy that it left because it left a legacy of genocide: black on black genocide." While making it clear that the course of violence must be reversed, he again ignores the role of alcoholism and other-drug addiction in creating the mindset that leads to the lion's share of abuse, including the ultimate crimes.At one point, the film points out he stopped using when he decided to seek redemption. The link is blurred, but at least it's there. He stopped using, which allowed him to seek redemption; redemption is impossible while still using, because the active addict thinks he's God.What the movie lacks in forging the link between addiction and misbehaviors, it makes up for in good acting and speeches of atonement. "We do good because it makes us feel alive. The first half of my life I was dead…but now the second half I get a chance to live and do something about it. And if I have to die in order to show the meaning—the true meaning of it—then so let it be." And, he points out the importance of self-responsibility in speeches to children: "This place (prison) does not make you a man. The moment you begin to make excuses for yourselves, that's the moment you get on to a pathway leading straight to here." And, "My violent gang past is unworthy of imitation or praise." He admits his greatest mistake ever was to co-found the Crips, while explaining that life is all about choices and that to assume there wasn't a choice is "just an excuse." However, he fails to point out that he never would have engaged in repetitive and horrific criminal behaviors if he hadn't inherited addiction, a common failure among addicts who all-too-often don't understand their own disease.Nonetheless, it's a good movie about redemption. My understanding of alcoholism--on which I write extensively--has turned me into a strong believer in the idea of allowing addicts to do what they can to right their sometimes heinous wrongs, if they are willing. The movie portrays him as having made a very decent attempt, even if the wrong can never be fully righted.