Average Rating: 
Rating:  - a great classic film
This would be a wonderful film for parents to watch with children old enough to understand the depth of its message. Good and evil are clearly drawn, and the values of justice and humanity portrayed with rare and memorable strength.
Reading Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize winning novel had a huge impact on me as a teenager...I never forgot, as Atticus says to Scout, that you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them.Horton Foote won an Oscar for his screenplay, which is so faithful to the book. Set in depression era Alabama, it's seen through the eyes of 8 year old Scout, beautifully played by Mary Badham, and the sensitivity of director Mulligan's vision is remarkable. Prejudice is the theme that runs through the story, from the harrowing court case of Tom (an amazing performance by Brock Peters), falsely accused of rape, to the demonization of Boo (played by Robert Duvall, in his screen debut...he's intensely moving as this innocent and silent man).
Russell Harlan's superb cinematography should be seen in the widescreen version to be fully appreciated, and Elmer Bernstein's Americana style score adds so much to the film. Gregory Peck's Oscar winning performance is magnificent. His Atticus is a hero of immense proportions, with compassion, integrity, and humility...and it's one of the many reasons I think this powerful classic deserves to be in every video library.
Rating: - An Awesome Film
To Kill a MockingbirdTo Kill a Mockingbird, starring Gregory Peck, Mary Badham, Phillip Alford, Brock Peters, Robert Duvall, and James Anderson, and directed by Robert Mulligan, is a pretty faithful adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee, a relative of Robert E. Lee. It is the story of a wise and kind man, Atticus Finch (Peck) raising a 10-year-old boy, Jem (Alford) and a 6-year-old girl, Scout (Badham) in a small Alabama town in 1932, during the Great Depression with their friend Dill Harris, played by John Megna. Atticus, a lawyer, defends a black man named Tom Robinson (Peters), accused of raping a white woman, just as he defends his children from racism as personified by Bob Ewell (Anderson) and from fear of the unknown, as personified by their mysterious neighbor, Boo Radley (Duvall) I think To Kill a Mockingbird is a great film. It also helps me learn what it was like back in the Great Depression. The theme is walking in somebody else's shoes, a figure of speech asking for tolerance. Part of the reason I liked it was because it centered on kids. The kids may have just been spectators in the balcony and victims in the woods, but I think their body language helped show their feelings. They looked unhappy and tired in the balcony and scared in the woods. I think the acting was excellent. The children often seemed natural to me. I am glad Gregory Peck earned an Academy Award, as Robert Duvall would in the future. I liked and admired Atticus, especially during his closing argument. Boo Radley looked just like I imagined. James Anderson was good as a bigot, but I think his role could have been made more subtle. Brock Peters impressed me with his emotional acting, but I think his role, too, could have been written to be more complex. It's like in a way he was too perfect.
Rating: - Commentary that remains relevant
Author Harper Lee said she never thought of her Pultizer Prize novel to be more than a love story of a single father for his two children. It is that, but so much more. "To Kill A Mockingbird" is also a simple social commentary on racism, wonderfully and innocently seen through a child's eyes, and man's rejection of others he doesn't understand. The commentary, 40 years old now, remains as relevant as then. As southern lawyer Atticus Finch, Peck garnered a Best Actor Oscar for his powerfully moving performance that, as one scene elicits, also commands a deep respect of the screen character. As defense counsel for an African-American (a contemporary poltically correct term; then, they were "coloreds") man falsely accused of raping a white woman (not popular in the south), Peck evokes a sense of outrage at the injustice of his client's position. The genius of the film, though, is its perspective of Peck's screen daughter, Scout. And it is her innocent confusion in not understanding why her father becomes chastised by the white community that hopefully gets across the sublimial message that there is no understanding of any form of discrimination. Ranked the 34th best film ever by the American Film Institute, this one will remain always relevant as long as injustice based on discrimination exists. The closing scene is gut-wrenching, but the film as a whole it is truly a moving experience.
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