TV REVIEW : A Haunting Account of Death of Vincent Chin

“P.O.V.”--the PBS series that showcases the work of independent nonfiction film makers--launches its second season tonight with a haunting, disturbing and utterly compelling account of a multilayered tragedy:

The time was volatile. Despairing and frustrated about rising unemployment, many Detroit auto workers blamed their economic woes on the auto-giant Japanese and, by extension, other Asians, including those who were U.S. citizens.

Chinese-American engineer Vincent Chin was soon to be married. So, as he left his Detroit home on a steamy summer evening in 1982 to unwind with a friend at a topless bar named Fancy Pants, he promised his reproachful mother it would be “the last time.”

“Don’t say last time,” Lily Chin cautioned her 27-year-old son. “It’s bad luck.”

A few hours later, Chin was clubbed to death with a baseball bat.

Airing at 10 p.m. on Channels 28 and 15, “Who Killed Vincent Chin?” is misleadingly titled, asking a question for which there is already an answer.

The killer was Ron Ebens, a middle-aged auto plant superintendent who that night had confrontations with Chin inside and outside Fancy Pants. Ebens and his stepson, Michael Nitz, later stalked and found Chin and a friend at a nearby McDonald’s, where Nitz held Chin while Ebens beat the helpless victim with the bat. Four days later, Chin died.

The broad facts were never in dispute. Instead, the enigmas central to the Chin case concerned the motivation for the killing--was it racial?--and the nature of a legal system under which Ebens and Nitz were able to elude jail despite their initial guilty pleas.

After plea-bargaining reduced the second-degree murder charge against them to manslaughter, each was sentenced to three years’ probation and fined $3,750.

On the screen, Judge Charles Kaufman justifies his light sentence with an explanation that sounds muddled and unsatisfactory:

“The victim lingered for four days, which . . . was indicative to me that they attempted to administer a punishment. They did this too severely, in careless disregard of human life, which is what manslaughter is. . . . Had it been a brutal murder, of course these fellas would be in jail by now.”

“Who Killed Vincent Chin?” was nominated for an Academy Award this year, and with good reason. Shrewdly saving their revelations for the end, film makers Christine Choy and Renee Tajima craftily and tantalizingly present the Chin case “Rashomon”-style against the music of heavy industry and Motown in work-hard, play-hard Motor City.

Speaking to us and telling conflicting stories are voices from both sides--family, friends, lawyers, witnesses.

Ebens and Lily Chin (even more than Vincent) are the clashing protagonists here, becoming striking visual metaphors for the ethnic and economic underpinnings of this important, powerfully told story:

The boyishly engaging auto worker sits beside his supportive All-American wife in their All-American home, while the victim’s mother, so pathetically distraught she is barely able to talk, squeezes off short, halting sentences in heavily broken English. Her emotions, so raw and pure, speak for themselves.

Was Vincent Chin the casualty of a drunken brawl or a racial vendetta? Is the proper question: What killed Vincent Chin? If so, is the proper answer: A society that tolerates, and even abets racism?

Ebens and Nitz were later tried twice on federal civil rights charges in this case, which lingered five years. Now, helped by this film, the memory lingers even longer.