Too Young to Die?

Juliette Lewis plays Amanda, age 15, a girl who has always been let down by all the adults around her. Her mother and stepfather abandon her, after she tells her mother about the sexual abuse her stepfather has inflicted on her. After an unsuccessful marriage, she leaves town and falls prey to a hustler, Billy (Brad Pitt). He introduces Amanda to the world of drugs and strip clubs, abusing her and forcing her to give him part of her paychecks. After a chance encounter with a soldier, Mike, he offers her a place to stay while she gets back on her feet. Even though she is still a child, Amanda and Mike begin a romantic relationship. After the relationship is revealed to his commanding officer, Mike breaks off the relationship, leaving her back on the streets to fend for herself. It is not long before Billy finds her and forces her to stay with him again. After a night of multiple drugs, Billy convinces Amanda to take revenge on Mike by killing him. The two steal into Mike's house, where they kidnap Mike and his girlfriend. After taking them into out-of-town oilfields, Amanda, wielding Billy's knife, stabs Mike. Amanda is eventually arrested and tried as an adult, despite her young age. The prosecuting lawyer is relentless and convinces the jury to see her as an emblem of the new breed of youth, the evil young people who need to be given a warning. Despite the best effort that Amanda's lawyer (Michael Tucker) who points out that it is society that let Amanda down and not only her choice that lead her to this moment, the jury is unsympathetic and convicts Amanda of murder. Amanda is, thus, sentenced to death by gas chamber. The movie ends with her anguished face before she enters the chamber.

Although set in Oklahoma, the film is loosely based on Attina Marie Cannaday, who along with David Gray, killed Ronald Wojcik, with a knife, in Harrison County, Mississippi on June 3, 1982.

Cannaday (born September 8, 1965) was charged with robbery, kidnapping, and homicide. At the time of her trial, she was a sixteen-year-old divorcee, who had married at thirteen and divorced at fourteen. She was convicted in Harrison County Circuit Court of the kidnap and murder of U. S. Air Force Sergeant Ronald Wojcik and the jury sentenced her to death by lethal injection. The guilty verdict was upheld, but the sentence was reversed in 1984, Cannaday v. State, 455 So.2d 713, 720 (Miss. 1984), and she was resentenced to one life sentence and two 25-year sentences at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility (inmate number 42451). She was released on parole on March 9, 2008.

Her co-defendant, David Randolph Gray (born May 29, 1954) was charged with aggravated assault, grand larceny, and homicide. He, too, was sentenced to death by lethal injection. His sentence was reversed in May 1987, by the U. S. Supreme Court, in Gray v. Mississippi, 481 U.S. 648, on the basis "a qualified juror was excluded from his trial". He is currently serving a life sentence in Central Mississippi Correctional Facility (inmate number 01440).[1][2][3][4]

• Juliette Lewis - as - Amanda Sue Bradley
• Brad Pitt - as - Billy Canton
• Michael Tucker - as - Buddy Thornton
• Alan Fudge - as - D.A. Mark Calhoun
• Emily Longstreth - as - Jean Glessner
• Laurie O'Brien- as - Wanda Bradley Sledge
• Yvette Heyden - as - Annie Meacham
• Tom Everett - as - Judge Harper
• Michael O'Keefe - as - Mike Medwicki
• Dean Abston- as - Harvey Sledge
• J. Stephen Brady - as - Brian
• Mark Davenport - as - Mickey
• Lew Hopson - as - Star
• Annabelle Weenick - as - Birdie Jewel
• Charles C. Stevenson Jr. - as - Pastor

• Review - RottenTomatoes
• Too Young to Die? at IMDb