After holding up a convenience store, African American petty crook Joseph Grange (Giancarlo Esposito) races to his girlfriend's house to give her the money. Confronted by the girl's current bedmate, he gets into a scuffle and accidentally shoots the man. Now the object of a citywide manhunt, the desperate Grange stumbles onto a remote cabin occupied by Clair Ballard (Sharon Lawrence), a white woman. Though terrified at the prospect of being Joseph's hostage, Clair somehow senses that he is more frightened than she. Drawing upon lessons learned in her own troubled past, Clair tries to get at the root of Joseph's problems, not only hoping to defuse the situation but also to help the man come to peace with himself. And in the course of the next five hours, Clair also learns a lot about handling her own crises from her repentant captor. First telecast by NBC on October 5, 1997, Five Desperate Hours was based on a true story.
by Hal Erickson
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