Review: Alfre Woodard gives one of the year's great performances in the stark, haunting 'Clemency'

In "Clemency," Chinonye Chukwu's gripping new movie, Alfre Woodard plays a death-row prison warden so deeply absorbed in her work that she often appears to be lost in thought. Her job requires both concentration and composure, an ability to maintain stillness and authority in the face of grim everyday realities. More than once a colleague will gently nudge her ("Warden ... Warden") and receive no response. Only when the warden hears her name ("Bernadine!") will she snap out of her trance, as though suddenly reminded that she is, in fact, a human being and not just a cog in the grinding machinery of death.

The humanity of the condemned - those who await death behind bars and those who