
Leroy Lowe, grand dragon of the Texas Ku Klux Klan confronts everything he's been taught to hate when he's sentenced to three years of hard labor on a prison work farm, where Warden Merville, dead set on rehabilitating Leroy, chooses Emilio, a Hispanic field worker imprisoned for fighting for labor rights, to be his cell-mate. Leroy, confined in a small cell with the enemy, far from the KKK comrades who deserted him, finds the chatty Emilio slowly chipping away at his anger a... (Full plot summary below)
Enjoy FREE movies and series with your Prime (USA) subscription or when you start a 30-day free trial!
Links compiled using automated software. Availability of offers subject to change / might be region specific / out of date.
Leroy Lowe, grand dragon of the Texas Ku Klux Klan confronts everything he's been taught to hate when he's sentenced to three years of hard labor on a prison work farm, where Warden Merville, dead set on rehabilitating Leroy, chooses Emilio, a Hispanic field worker imprisoned for fighting for labor rights, to be his cell-mate. Leroy, confined in a small cell with the enemy, far from the KKK comrades who deserted him, finds the chatty Emilio slowly chipping away at his anger and prejudice. His weekly rehabilitation meetings with the warden, barely tolerable as the man drones on about farm labor and field crops, take on a different meaning when Madalena, a beautiful Mexican maid is hired to clean the warden's office. An unconventional love story develops that opens Leroy's eyes to the possibility of a different life. And a man who was a born and bred racist finds himself heading down a completely different path to salvation.
Leave your thoughts about Cellmates.
| Shockya.comBrent SimonA slight but amiable prison-set satire, Cellmates surfs along mostly on the good fortune of its casting and sly peculiarity of its forced-odd-couple premise. |
| Film Journal InternationalFrank LovecePlodding, unfunny prison comedy in which a white racist shares a cell with a naive young Mexican. Still, it's nice to see Tom Sizemore working. |
| Cinema SignalsJules BrennerBroad as the brute force presentation of hot button racial issues are, the players are fully up to attacking it for all they're worth. |
| ReelTalk Movie ReviewsBetty Jo TuckerA clever comedy filled with satirical humor and perceptive social commentary. |
| HollywoodChicago.comBrian TallericoSizemore certainly does his best to elevate the material, but every time the movie threatens to kick into gear, something generic or even sitcom-ish in its degree of cliche derails it. |
| VarietyAndrew BarkerDirector Baget clearly strives to replicate the ersatz Dixie flavors of "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" right down to the vintage '30s music in a film set in the 1970s, but nailing the Coen brothers' precisely calibrated style is far harder than it looks. |
| tonymacklin.netTony MacklinCellmates is an indie film that shouldn't work. And at times it doesn't, but at other times it has an offbeat integrity that engages. |
| The Hollywood ReporterJohn DeForeIts low-rent cast and unappealing key art won't help at the box office, but viewers who stumble across it on cable may be pleasantly, if mildly, surprised. |
| Village VoiceErnest HardyThe film, directed by Jesse Baget, aims to be a satiric look at racism but at every turn flaunts the laws of logic and believability. |
| The New York TimesAndy WebsterThe credibility is low, the idealism high and the sentiment through the roof in Jesse Baget's slender, micro-budgeted comedy Cellmates, a schematic parable about racism and (less overtly) illegal immigration. |