I thought Billy Moses (so known in his youthful acting days) displayed the frustrated anger of an abused child so believably in this film. Best effort from him I've ever observed. Powerless anger is a complex emotion and he nailed it. It can't be easy to show anger, pain, and frustration in the same tearful face. It's not that I don't have a life, but did anybody else notice that the license plate on his preserved boyhood Mustang was the exact same as on James Garner's ROCKFORD FILES Firebird 30 years ago. Please, somebody. I was especially impressed by this abused character being unable to accept harsh military discipline and faking mental illness to escape that commitment. How many young men in jails, prisons and stockades are there because of unresolved anger from childhood abuse? And that admission by his character complicated the revelation of his innocence. This movie is more than just a two-hour MURDER SHE WROTE, but the complex story of a father's botched love for his fearful son. It challenges the Biblical admonition of spare the rod and spoil the child when a religious man goes off discipline's deep, dark end. The they-lived-happily-ever-after ending was ambiguous at best and most of us would have loved to have seen the money actually returned to its rightful owners not just alluded to.
