Riverbend (1989)

Genres - Action, Drama  |   Run Time - 106 min.  |   Countries - United States  |   MPAA Rating - R
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Synopsis by Sandra Brennan

In this made-for-TV actioner, three rebellious black army officers disobey orders in Vietnam and refuse to destroy a village filled with innocent people. They are sent to Georgia where they undergo a court-martial. The officers know that they are going to be railroaded and so manage to escape. The fugitives end up in Riverbend, hiding in the home of a sympathetic widow. The town is controlled by a brutal, extremely racist sheriff who kills those opposing him and freely takes whatever he wants from the terrified residents. This doesn't set well with one of the officers who, with plans to usurp the sheriff's authority, convinces the others to help him create a secret training camp in the woods. They then begin recruiting the local black men and training them for combat. When they are ready, the angry rebels take over the town, incarcerate the sheriff and all his cohorts and hold the rest of the town hostage in a church until their demands for media attention and an end to racism are met.

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Keywords

military, bigotry, Black [race], church, Civil-Rights, corruption, courtmartial, cross-cultural-relations, human-rights, killing, officer, on-the-run, persecution, police, power, prejudice, racism, rape, sheriff, small-town, soldier, Southerner, takeover, uprising