TRUE CRIME
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Warner Bros./Zanuck Co./Malpaso production Director: Clint Eastwood Writer: Andrew Klavan (novel), Larry Gross, Paul Brickman, Stephen Schiff Cast: Clint Eastwood, Isaiah Washington, Denis Leary, Lisa Gay Hamilton, James Woods, Penny Rae Bridges, Frances Fisher, Bernard Hill, Michael Jeter, Lucy Alexis Liu, Mary McCormack, Sydney Poitier, Diane Venora
You may think that movies which depend on the hero's racing against the clock are juvenile. For the most part you're probably correct. After all, the bomb always gets defused with two seconds remaining on its clearly marked clock, and an investigation into the character of the participants is irrelevant to the action. In "True Crime," Clint Eastwood's 21st film as director, Eastwood plays a reporter who believes a convicted murderer is innocent and has just a twelve-hour window to stop the poor guy's execution. While the competition against the clock does work the audience up as an edge-of-the-seat nailbiter against its own best attempts to resist, the sprint to save a life is not the principal theme of "True Crime." Eastwood's movie is primarily an analysis of character made all the more compelling because the hero's makeup is contrasted unfavorably with that of the prisoner. The alleged killer is a born-again Christian with a loving and responsible attitude toward his wife and daughter, while the reporter is a drunk and at the age of sixty-eight an unreconstituted womanizer who ignores even his basic obligations toward his small daughter.
Eastwood, one of the world's most popular screen performers, got his start with spaghetti Westerns by Sergio Leone, making big box office bucks with such Italian cowboy operas as "A Fistful of Dollars" and "For a Few Dollars More," and contributed his share of violence to the medium as "Dirty Harry." He acquired new prestige with the critics for his revisionist Western "Unforgiven" just seven years ago, taking a best-picture Oscar. What's more he joins such notables as Robert Redford and Warren Beatty in making age irrelevant to sex appeal, though with "True Crime" he may stretch credibility a tad by his ability charm women of twenty-three while neglecting his wife, presumably because she had reached the ripe old age of thirty-five.
"True Crime" sets its tone in the very beginning by centering not on Eastwood's role as a reporter eager to stop a man's execution, but on his capacity to seduce women forty-five years his junior. As Steve Everett, a drunk who had lost a job in a major daily and now works for an Oakland, California paper under editors Bob Findley (Denis Leary) and Alan Mann (James Woods), he works his wiles on a fellow journalist, Michelle (Mary McCormack) in a local bar. When the twenty-something Michelle successfully rebuffs the man's advances only to die in a tragic auto accident, Everett is assigned to take Michelle's place and to interview convicted killer Frank Beachum (Isaiah Washington) at San Quentin prison just eight hours before Beachum's scheduled execution. Beachum was convicted of the murder of a twenty-three year old clerk in a convenience store on the testimony of just one witness, who testified that he saw the man holding a gun and standing over the bloodied corpse. Though the exchange is to lead only to a human-interest sidebar in the paper, Everett's keen sense informs him that the man is probably innocent. As he puts it to the convict in the death house, "The nose is all I have...If it does not work I might as well drive off the cliff. The nose tells me you're innocent."
As both actor and director, Eastwood milks the story for both humor and pathos. The most amusing scene finds his boss, Bob Findley, phoning his own wife in order to get in touch with the reporter, as the paper's honcho is convinced that Everett is currently in bed with Findley's spouse, Patricia (played with spirit and wit by Laila Robins). Following up on this tryst, chief editor Alan Mann appears to chew the womanizing reporter out only to ask four or five times--in the standard James-Woods manner--whether Patricia was good in bed.
Director Eastwood is at his best when contrasting the deteriorating relationship between Everett and his wife Barbara (Diane Venora) with the nurturing connection that the condemned man enjoys with his spouse, Bonnie (Lisa Gay Hamilton) and small daughter, Gail (Penny Rae Bridges). As the clock ticks down the final moments before the treacherous chemicals leak into Frank Beachum's veins, we're reminded of a similar scene in "Last Dance," but sharper acting, a wittier script, and clever surprises peppered throughout the drama make "True Crime" more compelling, credible and whimsical than the 1996 vehicle for Sharon Stone. "True Crime" may not turn proponents of capital punishment into abolitionists, but together with Viagra, it gives considerable hope to aging men that they can find compliant women simply by turning on the charm that their callow competition simply has not developed.
Rated R. Running Time: 127 minutes. (C) 1999 Harvey Karten
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