Matewan

John Sayles’ brilliant account of the violent conflict arising from a 1920s miners’ strike has the mythic clarity and power of a great western.

  • Director

    John Sayles

  • With

    Chris Cooper, Mary McDonnell, David Strathairn, James Earl Jones

  • USA 1987. 133min

  • Digital 4K

  • Certificate

    15

In 1920s West Virginia, a mining town becomes an arena of conflict between the workers and the armed strike-breakers; a union rep and the police chief try to prevent the former from fighting among themselves. Sayles’ wise, witty, acutely insightful dissection of the power struggles at work in the community of Matewan has the mythic clarity and scale of a great western.