In the Land of the Free

The Angola 3 are a trio of onetime Black Panthers who have spent the bulk of their life in solitary confinement, deep within the bowels of Louisiana's state penitentiary, aka the Farm. Now along comes Vadim Jean's crusading polemic, lobbying for the release of the two who remain behind bars and lifting the lid on all manner of institutionalised American madness. The judge is a racist and the chief eyewitness is legally blind, and out in the prison yard the convicts are thrown to the bulls for the entertainment of a paying public. Errol Morris's The Thin Blue Line was sharper, tougher, more in command of its brief. But this, in its way, is just as horrific.