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CABLE TELEVISION RELEASE: JANUARY 10, 2001 (MTV)
This poignant and absorbing drama, based on the true story of the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a twenty one-year-old openly gay student in Laramie, Wisconsin, takes an honest approach to the controversial issue of hate crimes and violence. Matthew Shepard (Cy Carter) was a bright and well-liked student at the University of Wisconsin, who had traveled extensively and finally settled in the sleepy cowboy town of Laramie. Told in a series of episodic flashbacks, leading up to the evening of the fateful crime, director Tim Hunter chronicles the lives of Shepard, as well as his killers Aaron McKinney (Brendan Fletcher) and Russell Henderson (Ian Somerhalder), capturing their shared adolescent loneliness and alienation. Reminiscent of Tim Hunter's earlier portrait of disaffected youth, THE RIVER'S EDGE, and 1999's groundbreaking true story of a young woman's hate-motivated murder in BOY'S DON'T CRY, the young characters in the film are struggling to understand their own identity and existence in a small, isolated town. Unlike Matthew, Aaron and Russell lived a hard-partying drugged-out existence full of rage at their own burnt-out lives and lost opportunities. Down on their luck, and low on drug money, they singled out the well-dressed and effeminate Matthew at a local bar on October 7, 1998 and offered to drive him home, hoping to rob him for drug money. But, what began as a robbery quickly became a hate crime, as Matthew's killers became consumed with rage and anti-gay hate, beating him senseless and tying him to a property divider on a secluded farm road in below-freezing temperatures. Their ruthless crime ended in the widely publicized death of Matthew Shepard five days later.
This well-made MTV production thoroughly captures the lives of the young people of Laramie and the promising student who lost his life due to intolerance and ignorance.
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