Saltzman Sees...A Lesson Before Dying (1999)

A Lesson Before Dying stars Don Cheadle, Cicely Tyson and Mekhi Phifer. Tyson is always brilliant, but Cheadle gives another masterful performance for HBO.  He was tremendous as Earl Manigault in Rebound three years earlier, and he is again magnificent as Grant Wiggins.  This was a novel and a teleplay before becoming an HBO Movie and is certainly adapted well to the screen.  Very much like Dead Man Walking, which got much acclaim, Wiggins is asked to help a man on death row.  With the racial tension of the 1940's and a young black man in jail for killing a white man, Wiggins becomes the only person willing to help.