If they ever handed out awards for determination, filmmaker Tom Rice should be among the first in line for "The Rising Place." Armed solely with a screenplay loosely based on an unpublished story and little in the way of financing, the novice writer-director-producer-production manager nevertheless managed to attract a top-flight cast to his well-intentioned social drama set in the Deep South of the 1940s. [...] while those players -- including Frances Fisher, Frances Sternhagen, Tess Harper and S. Epatha Merkerson -- all do finely seasoned work, Rice's inexperience in both the scripting and directing departments is all too apparent, reducing this period portrait of social injustice to something resembling a not-so-"Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" with a hefty helping of "Re-Fried Green Tomatoes."

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