It was directed by Jerry London, and stars Charlton Heston, Keith Carradine, Stephen Collins, Danny Glover, Brad Davis, Paul Sorvino, Lane Smith, Paula Kelly, Wayne Rogers, and Billy Dee Williams.

The plot follows three generations of Delano police chiefs - Will Henry Lee (Wayne Rogers), Sonny Butts (Brad Davis), and Tyler Watts (Billy Dee Williams) - as they investigate a series of murders.

Not long after his appointment, Chief Lee has to investigate the death of a young boy who fell down a ravine while apparently fleeing an attack that had sexual characteristics.

Sure that solving the decades-long mystery will save his job, Butts goes to Funderburke's land and catches him in the very act of burying his latest victim.

Around that time, Tyler Watts, a retired, decorated military officer and experienced criminal investigator, takes the bold step for a black man in 1962 of applying for the vacant position of police chief in a southern town.

He does not recognize Watts as his boyhood friend Joshua Cole, son of the man who shot his father, because the child fled the town following the shooting and assumed another name.

Watts encounters resistance from some members of his own, all-white force (though most eventually accept him) and from Sheriff Skeeter Willis, all of whom resent the arrival of a black chief of police.

Unable to obtain a local search warrant for Funderburke's farm, Watts and Lee seek the FBI's assistance in the case.

Watts, however, is now an acknowledged hero, and he decides to tell Billy Lee - now the governor-elect of Georgia, who is awaiting a visit from President Kennedy, on his way back to Washington from Dallas - who he really is.

Nevertheless, he noted that the performances of Davis (Sonny Butts), Sorvino (Skeeter), Carradine (Foxy Funderburke), and Glover (Marshall Peters) were outstanding.