TV REVIEW : Revisiting an ‘Assault at West Point’

When it comes to portraying racist characters, television has never been reluctant to use extreme examples, such as white-sheeted Klansmen and epithet-spewing rednecks. What distinguishes “Assault at West Point” (Sunday at 8 p.m. on Showtime) is its willingness to intelligently explore a more insidious form of racism that often lurks beneath a proper and respectable veneer.

Set in 1880, this real-life drama is centered around a black Army cadet named Johnson Whittaker (Seth Gilliam) who is bound, beaten and mutilated by several of his West Point classmates. Yet rather than mount a legitimate investigation into this nearly fatal attack, the military Establishment decides to court-martial Whittaker for allegedly staging the incident. Its claim is that the sole black cadet at the academy was trying to avoid taking a philosophy exam that, if failed, would have prevented him from graduating.

Despite the inherent drama surrounding the plight of Whittaker, the more captivating and socially resonant aspect of this film involves his two defense attorneys. Richard Greener (Samuel L. Jackson) is a Harvard-educated black lawyer fighting an uphill battle for personal and professional respect. Daniel Chamberlain (Sam Waterston) is a prominent white attorney who is unwilling to acknowledge his own subtle and sometimes overt prejudices.

What helps to make Chamberlain such an involving character is his relatively strong civil rights background. In the past he’s taken stands against slavery and, as the governor of South Carolina, he allowed blacks into higher education.

Nevertheless, Chamberlain’s defense of Whittaker lacks moral fiber. In court, he portrays him as somewhat cowardly and mentally dull rather than as a victim of a hate crime. Chamberlain infers that he’s attempting to gain sympathy from the five mostly conservative judges. But Greener, in several emotionally incisive scenes, exposes Chamberlain as a condescending figure who views blacks as being inferior to whites.

Written and directed by Harry Moses, “Assault at West Point” suffers from some stiff dialogue and occasional periods of tedium, but there are enough thought-provoking aspects to the drama, as well as a fine performance by Waterston, to keep most viewers hooked.