The Greenville News du lieu suivant : Greenville, South Carolina • Page 122

'Right of the People' Gun crazy By Tom Harrison The News TV writer Two masked gunmen walk into a crowded restaurant and open fire with shotguns. Some of the victims are hit at extremely close range; some are blown out of their seats. Yet when the police arrive, there is virtually no blood on the walls, the floor, the victims. It's about as logical as anything else you will see in ABC's The Right of the People (9-11 p.m. Monday, Channel 13).

This oh-so- equivocal drama purports to deal fairly with both sides of the gun control issue, but writerdirector Jeffrey Bloom hasn't raised anyone's consciousness. He has LYSl values. "What good is the right of the people without the heart?" she tells Chris Booth. A decent sentiment, but it has no place in this film. The Right of the People leaves little question about its point of view.

Our cities, even the small and medium-sized towns once regarded as havens, are being overrun by violent crime. Early on, we hear the voice of commentator Paul Harvey, who speaks of the "senseless slaughter" in St. Lawrence. During a funeral, a children's choir sings as the camera pans across grim, drawn faces. During a tense supper, Trainor's little girl asks Chris Booth if his daughter went to heaven.

"Yes," he replies in a hoarse whisper, "and so did her mother." Writerdirector Bloom asks us to believe that this man of the law would snap like a dry twig when overcome by grief. Booth seems to control his rage until he meets Styles (Jeffrey Joseph-son), one of the killers, face to face. What would you do, Chris asks him, if it was your wife and kid? "I'd do what you're only thinking about doing," the man replies. "Only you don't got the guts." The town meeting is a rabble-rouser's dream, with an outraged Chris Booth exhorting the townsfolk to join him on the battlements. "I don't want to be the next victim! he shouts.

"If it's war, let's call it war; if it's peace, prove it to Proposition isn't a "mandate for lawlessness," he claims, but a "long-overdue recognition of the facts of life." When Alecia appeals to his sense of reason, Booth sounds like a TV evangelist: "This country was born out of revolution, but it's dying out of indifference," he says. Thus dispensing with the preliminaries, Bloom gets into the meat or rather, the potatoes of the story. Booth's campaign for Proposition is enthusiastically backed by gun lobbyists and right-wing types, who quietly let him know the cash is there if he needs it. The TV ads are impressive, as is the red-and-black poster that becomes the Proposition logo. By this point, The Right of the People becomes less an issue film than a marketing strat- succeeded only in making foolish caricatures of everyone here.

"Guns don't start revolutions They end them," says Christopher Booth (Michael Ont-kean), the young prosecutor for a town called St. Lawrence (read: Anywhere, USA). Booth has started a revolution by waving his .45 pistol and telling the assembled townspeople that he's mad as you-know-what, and he isn't going to take it anymore. Days before, Booth's wife and 6-year-old daughter were victims of the aforementioned bloodless massacre. Boiling with grief and anger, Booth lashes out.

He proposes an ordinance that would allow anyone over the age of 18 and free of a criminal record to carry a weapon concealed or otherwise within the city limits. The townspeople enthusiastically support what is called "Proposition but the mayor (M. Emmet Walsh), a councilwoman (Janet Carroll), and the chief of police (John Randolph) aren't so sure. They are justifiably apprehensive about 75,000 eligible gun owners strapping on sidearms before taking it to the streets. More outspoken in their opposition are Booth's, best friend, Detective Mike Trainor (Billy Dee Williams), and a syndicated columnist, Alecia Frost (Jane Kaczmarek).

The former doesn't want his town to become Dodge City; the latter sees Proposition as an erosion of traditional Page 28 The Greenville News and Greenville Piedmont Sunday, January 12, 1986.