"STONING" STATES ITS CASE ON PREJUDICE by Tom Green

The television movie reaches a unique perfection in this two-hour drama about a clash between religion and justice.

The cast is pure television, featuring stars from perhaps three of the current most critically acclaimed hour series on the air. Ken Olin represents ABC'sThirty-Something, Jill Eikenberry is from NBC's L.A. Law and Ron Perlman is from CBS's Beauty and the Beast.

All three major networks are even represented in the most ecumenical casting on the new season.

The story that unfolds also is well-suited to the TV movie format. It has a message to bring us about prejudice and uses this form effectively. Happily, the story is told with considerable wisdom and caring and is extraordinarily affecting. Performances, script and production values are singularly good.

The drama is about an Amish family whose infant daughter is killed by joy-riding teenagers stoning their buggy-evidently some sort of macho sport in this rural North Carolina community.

When a new prosecuting attorney (Olin) tries to convict the boys, he faces three hurdles: community hatred of the Amish; his wife (Eikenberry), who wants to settle there; and the dead baby's Amish father (Perlman), whose religious beliefs won't permit him to let his pre-teen daughter - the sole eyewitness - to testify against the killers.

Olin, as a young county prosecutor, is a powerful study in controlling rage while trying to make a difference in a town seething with contempt for a people determined to live outside their world.

But the acting of all three stars in this astute film project amply demonstrates why their own television series are so highly regarded.

USA TODAY October' 24, 1988.