A powerful all-star cast, with varying degrees of screen time, in this film adaptation of a John Steinbeck book. It can drag at times and I felt it was overly long, but the message of the movie is quite important, in my opinion.
Set in 1933 (during the Great Depression), in the apple orchards of the Tongas Valley, in California, James Franco and Nat Wolff star as two radical organizers who infiltrate the apple pickers in that region to get them to fight back and band together against the landowners who are exploiting them.
The orchard owners will do anything to protect their interests and, as one would expect, the two groups will violently clash and chaos and bloodshed will ensue. I might note Vincent D'Onofrio gives a superlative performance here as London, a giant of a man elected to be the leader of the workers.
All in all, despite its flaws this movie serves as a good reminder of how bad things can get if the pendulum swings too far between the interests of business and their workers. In the seemingly rush of our Washington D.C. politicians to give free rein to corporations, perhaps this film can illustrate again that we're still fighting some of the same battles today some 80 years later.
