“Son of the South” gets off to an appalling start, with a man being dragged by two others, and then a freeze frame, accompanied by a voice-over: “That’s me, Bob Zellner.” As the meme goes, we’re probably wondering how he ended up in this situation — being dragged toward a noose. That Bob is white and not Black is presumably supposed to make the use of this glib and much-parodied device permissible in this context. But given that lynchings have historically been directed by whites against African-Americans, the introduction is mortifyingly tone-deaf.

“Five months ago, life was simpler,” Bob explains, in another line so overworked it should have been cut. The screenplay, by the director, Barry Alexander Brown, a longtime editor for Spike Lee, somewhat eases up on the clichés from there. Based on the memoir that Zellner wrote with his fellow civil rights activist Constance Curry, the film tells the story of how Zellner (Lucas Till), the grandson of a Klansman (a late role for Brian Dennehy, who died in April), became an active figure in the civil rights movement in early-1960s Alabama, eventually becoming the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s first white field secretary.

A biopic that foregrounds the perspective of a white Alabamian — who was treated violently for his activism but could protest from a position of relative safety — yet turns John Lewis (Dexter Darden) and other Black activists (including a love interest played by Lex Scott Davis) into supporting characters is an ideologically fraught proposition in 2021. Accepted on its terms, the film does a reasonably absorbing job of dramatizing how Zellner’s convictions strengthened, pulling him away from the security of inaction.

Son of the South
Rated PG-13. Racist violence and language. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters and on Google Play, FandangoNow and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators. Please consult the guidelines outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before watching movies inside theaters.