TRUE CRIME
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: In a story that takes place almost
entirely in one day a reporter covering a Death Row
execution tries to prove the condemned man is
innocent. Clint Eastwood stars, produces, and
directs. The mainline story is cliched melodrama,
but the writing and especially the well-developed
minor characters give the plot a royal treatment.
Rating: 7 (0 to 10), +2 (-4 to +4)
Steve "Ev" Everett (Clint Eastwood) is a bad-boy reporter who refuses to follow any rules. Right now he is holding back on his drinking, but he is smoking and, oh yes, sleeping with his editor's wife. This does not make for good relationships around the office, but Ev carries on (in several different senses). When a fellow reporter is killed in a (gratuitously spectacular) car accident, Ev picks up her responsibilities including the interviewing and writing a human interest sidebar about Frank Beachum (Isaiah Washington), a Death Row inmate scheduled to be executed the next night at midnight. But in reviewing the trial from six years earlier Ev starts questioning whether the story makes sense. There appear to be problems in the trial testimony. But Ev now mistrusts his own once powerful talent to "smell out" when there is something suspicious with a story. And as he traces the story he sabotages his own effectiveness by not following anybody's rules but his own.
Eastwood creates more believable characters for the minor roles than the character he creates for himself. But then going back to THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES he has frequently done the same thing. Bernard Hill plays the role of Luther Plunkett, the prison warden. It would be cliche to play him as officious and unfeeling. Instead he turns out to be a genuinely caring person. On the other hand Isaiah Washington has been getting some favorable press as the condemned Frank Beachum. We see a lot of him, but he plays the simon-pure innocent to the hilt. Where an actor should have personality he has only virtue. Though his character was not always so, we see him he is the perfect husband and father. The film intentionally contrasts his ultra-perfect family values with those of Everett which have ripped apart Everett's family. We feel for Beachum, but other than in his moments of greatest pain it is more for his predicament than for his character. His family is just a little too wholesome. James Woods plays Eastwood's boss at the newspaper in a role only a little less slimy than his usual. Woods is one of the few actors who can steal attention away from Eastwood. Other familiar actors include Anthony Zerbe and an almost unrecognizable William Windom as a bartender.
Clint Eastwood is really a very good director in a very controlled film. However he has the same Achilles Heel that Woody Allen has. He has to paint himself as being the great lover. His character seems to be able to seduce any woman he wants. The problem is that he is getting on in years. His youthful good looks have given way to an older chiseled look. Eastwood seems to be doing his locker room bragging on the wide screen. His even raspier voice is now a sort that lost actors careers when sound came to films. Perhaps Eastwood, the gifted director, should consider if he needs a better star than Eastwood, the actor. On the other hand playing the character himself thematically gives the film one big advantage. Eastwood almost invariably plays the outlaw. He is Kurosawa's samurai Sanjuro, a law unto himself, transplanted to America. But in his younger spaghetti Western and Dirty Harry days he has played that character as hero. As he has aged Eastwood has begun to look at that character more deeply than Kurasawa ever did. In UNFORGIVEN he began re-examining the hard man who was this character he had created on the screen. He began questioning on film if the violence that was the former screen persona's daily bread did not exact a toll. Was the man with the big gun not dehumanized and desensitized by carrying and using that weapon. In TRUE CRIME Eastwood shows us how that character gets to middle age and can no longer make his personal relationships work. In this film he clearly envies the man who, though once a criminal, has reformed and built a strong family, even if that relationship turns out to be only temporarily.
Just as an aside, an interesting visual allusion is used. When Ev is interviewing Beachum, Eastwood has himself shot through the bars recreating the poster from his ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ. It is a reminder of the days when Eastwood was building his reputation and his films were just solid entertainment. TRUE CRIME is certainly a good film, but lacks the fun of his earlier work. Still I would give it a 7 on the 0 to 10 scale and a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
Copyright 1999 Mark R. Leeper
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