Set during the 1920s in West Virginia, Matewan is a small mining town whose workers have responded with a strike to the coal company's announcement of a wage cut. The bosses reply to this act of defiance but bringing black and Italian workers to take over their jobs. A lone stranger (a Union organiser) arrives in town to unite the locals against the tooled-up heavies and, as the tension escalates, a violent end to the standoff seems inevitable. Sayles' powerful gripping movie never compromises its political content in its use, or up-ending, of Western conventions. It possesses a mythic clarity, but also a welcome complexity, in the vivid characterisations and the unsentimental celebration of community and collective action. The result is witty, astute, and, finally, very moving. Deemed by many as a classic of contemporary independent American cinema.