{ { Infobox film
| name = Matewan
| image = Matewan poster.jpg
| caption = Theatrical release poster
| alt =
| director = John Sayles
| producer = Peggy RajskiMaggie Renzi
| writer = John Sayles
| starring =
| music = Mason Daring
| cinematography = Haskell Wexler
| editing = Sonya Polonsky
| distributor = Cinecom Pictures
| released =
| runtime = 132 minutes
| country = United States
| language = English
| budget = $4 million(estimated)<ref name="sayles">Gerry Molyneaux, "John Sayles, Renaissance Books, 2000 p 155.</ref> | gross = under $2 million (US) }}Matewan () is a 1987 American drama film written and directed by John Sayles, and starring Chris Cooper (in his film debut), James Earl Jones, Mary McDonnell and Will Oldham, with David Strathairn, Kevin Tighe and Gordon Clapp in supporting roles. The film dramatizes the events of the Battle of Matewan, a coal miners' strike in 1920 in Matewan, a small town in the hills of West Virginia.Matewan was a critical success but a box office flop, grossing under $2 million on an estimated $4 million budget. The film received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, and received a Criterion Collection re-release in 2019.
Plot
Joe Kenehan is an ex-Wobbly organizer for the United Mine Workers. He arrives in Matewan, West Virginia in 1920 to organize miners against the Stone Mountain Coal Company. His introduction to the town is his witnessing of a mob of miners angry at wage cuts beating up black miners who intended to cross the picket line. He takes up residence at a boarding house run by a coal miner's widow, Elma Radnor, and her 15-year-old son, Danny, who is also a miner and a budding Baptist preacher. The miners are reluctant to bring the imported workers, both black and Italian into their union, a cause not helped by C. E. Lively, a spy for the company within the union, who tries to goad the miners into violence and secretly informs the Baldwin–Felts Detective Agency of the "red" Kenehan's presence.
The next day, two Baldwin–Felts men, Hickey and Griggs, show up in town and take up residence at the Radnor boarding house. Danny at first refuses to give rooms to Hickey and Griggs, but Kenehan voluntarily moves to the hotel, freeing up a room for the two men and averting trouble for Mrs. Radnor. Hickey and Griggs then start their campaign against the union by forcibly evicting miners from company-owned houses in town. Mayor Testerman and Police Chief Sid Hatfield refuse to let them be evicted without eviction writs from Charleston. Hatfield deputizes all the men in town and tells them to go home and come back with their guns.
The Baldwin–Felts men then turn their attention on the strikers' camp outside town, where the miners and their families are living in tents. At night, the armed strikebreakers fire shots into the camp, injuring some strikers. The next day, they enter the camp to demand that all food and clothing purchased at the company store with scrip be turned over to them, but are thwarted by the arrival of armed hill people, whose land was taken by the coal company. Expressing disdain for the noise caused by the gunmen's automobile the night before, their presence and sympathy for the miners compels the Baldwin–Felts men to leave empty-handed. The slow arrival of the union's thinly stretched strike funds tests the patience of Danny Radnor and other miners who become disillusioned and turn to violence in spite of Kenehan's warnings. The miners are involved in a night-time shootout with the agents and Sephus is wounded. He is rescued by some hill people but not before he recognizes Lively as the infiltrator.