Often, when you write a screenplay for a film or whatever, you have to have a theme involved. In this film, there are at least three: Redemption, Fighting for Freedom, and Sticking to Principles. The reason you need a theme is to weave a story around it, and in the case of historical dramas you're not going so much for realism all the time but to make a good story.
I often tell my friends that films and television are not real life. Of course, they know that, as I'm sure you do, but I tell people that anyway because Life is not a show. Life tells stories in a different way, often without a climax, or even a salient dilemma in the right spots, and often things don't always work out neatly. When you've only got 100 minutes for a show, in those days, to tell a story, you have to trim things, and cut to the chase, and create good tension and drama. To have Alvin find his Faith after meeting Gracie is not as interesting as God hitting him with a bolt of lightning (which was foreshadowed) to prevent him from killing a man and thus being sentence to death for pre-meditated murder.
So, when you see films like this, always do some research afterward. Sometimes, the truth is better than the fiction.
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