Now available on home video through Columbia TriStar

Ed Solomon, the screenwriter of Men in Black and Leaving Normal, made his directorial debut with LEVITY, a thought-provoking drama about the nature of sin and redemption. Solomon first came up with the idea for the film after spending time working as a tutor in a juvenile prison. The film, shot on location during a snowy winter in Quebec, boasts the talents of cinematographer Roger Deakins (A Beautiful Mind, O Brother Where Art Thou?) and editor Pietro Scalia (Hannibal, Gladiator), an Oscar winner for his work on Black Hawk Down.

LEVITY was selected to screen at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival as the opening night film.
Echo Lake executive produced the FilmColony production with Revelations Entertainment and Entitled Entertainment.

To learn more about the film, please visit the Sony Pictures Classics website. Or click here to purchase the DVD from amazon.com.


CAST

Billy Bob Thornton
(Monster's Ball; The Man Who Wasn't There; A Simple Plan)

Morgan Freeman
(The Sum of All Fears; Along Came a Spider; Seven)

Holly Hunter
(Moonlight Mile; O Brother Where Art Thou?; The Piano)

Kirsten Dunst
(Spider-Man; Crazy/Beautiful; Bring It On)


LEVITY synopsis

Manual Jordan has done his time. After spending almost 20 years behind bars, the parole board has declared him a free man. But Manual prefers to remain behind bars. It's justice, he thinks, after what he did. Manual killed a man. Not even a man, a young kid helping out in the convenience store Manual and his pals planned to rob. Ever since, the victim, Abner Easley, has shared Manual's life, staring down at him from the wall of his cell, a yellowing newspaper portrait of a young life cut short.

Now Manual is out. He is changed, unrecognizable, but he is drawn irresistibly to the city where he committed his crime. An enigmatic pastor, Miles Evans, offers Manual work at a community house in a tough neighborhood. Miles allow local rich kids frequenting the hip nightclub next door to park free in his lot in return for listening to fifteen minutes of his fire-and-brimstone preaching. Miles castigates their empty, hedonistic lives while Manual guards their cars. As Manual soon discovers, however, the job entails a lot more. Sofia, a beautiful young woman apparently intent on self-destruction, regularly needs his aid to make it back to the huge house she shares with her alcoholic, former pop-star mother. And Miles rapidly enlists Manual to fulfill some of his more delicate neighborhood duties while the pastor himself is mysteriously out of town. Like Manual, Miles and Sofia have deeply hidden secrets they are scared to confront.

Above all, though, Manual tries to help out Adele, Abner Easley's sister. Without revealing his identity to her, he begins by carrying her shopping and soon becomes her friend. Adele's son, named Abner after his dead uncle, is a rebellious young man heading down the same path that Manual knows so well. But in trying to protect young Abner, maybe Manual is simply trying to redeem himself and excuse his developing relationship with Adele. When he and Abner wind up in a blind alley, the resolution is inevitably violent.