TRUE CRIME (Warner Bros. - 1999) Cast: Clint Eastwood, Isiah Washington, Denis Leary, Lisa Gay Hamilton, James Woods Screenplay by Larry Gross and Paul Brickman and Stephen Schiff Produced by Clint Eastwood, Robert D. Zanuck and Lili Fini Zanuck Directed by Clint Eastwood Running time: 127 minutes
Note: Some may consider portions of the following text to be spoilers. Be forewarned.
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Clint Eastwood's latest picture, the death-row drama TRUE CRIME, is a carefully deceptive one; given its core elements -- a man condemned to die for a murder he denies committing, a stubborn reporter hot on the trails of "discrepancies" in the case -- the obvious expectation is that of an urgent high-octane mystery thriller, and indeed, we're subjected to all the generic trademarks of the film genre: the meaningful shots of ticking clocks, the final walk to the death chamber, the lingering image of the direct line to the governor. Still, under Eastwood's characteristic quiet authority, the film distinguishes itself from the pack by being decidedly more of a character study than a potboiler, and despite its beat-the-clock scenario, the movie seems almost defiantly leisurely-paced.
The central characters, journeyman newspaper reporter Steve Everett (Eastwood) and convicted murderer Frank Beachum (Isiah Washington), are introduced in parallel storylines kept so determinedly separated that they encounter each other but twice throughout the entire film. Nonetheless, there's a certain intimacy created as the picture closely observes their minutiae over the span of a fateful 24 hours.
A somber dread permeates Beachum's narratively familiar storyline, which follows the doomed inmate through the hours leading up to his scheduled execution. Convicted for the murder of a pregnant convenience store clerk, a hollowed Beachum steadfastly maintains his innocence but seems resigned to his fate. While the scales are tipped a bit too far by painting him as a selfless born-again Christian, the thread is sufficiently poignant and affecting, and Beachum's final farewell scenes with devastated wife Bonnie (Lisa Gay Hamilton) and especially his confused little daughter are powerful and moving.
Meanwhile, upon the untimely demise of a colleague, Everett inherits her piece. Assigned to interview Beachum for the so-called "human interest" beat, he's immediately convinced that something's amiss with the capital case, and to the protests of the paper's editor-in-chief (James Woods) and exasperated city editor (Denis Leary), insistently delves into the story. What follows is largely a routine investigatory procedural, as Everett visits the scene of the crime, wades through old case files, interviews witnesses and leeringly insinuates "But how could you see over the potato chips?"
All standard fare for the typical clock-is-ticking thriller, to be sure, but where TRUE CRIME departs from the formula, and where, I suspect, Eastwood's interest truly lies, is with the loving construction of wily Everett as a fully-realised three-dimensional character with all his flaws and idiosyncracies intact; this is a picture whose fascination with character outweighs intrigue with its story. Few have played flawed heroes more regularly than Eastwood, and he's in familiar territory as Everett, an aging womanizer and recovering alcoholic whose self-destructive behaviour inflicts suffering to those around him. A washout as a husband and a father, and with a tendency to get on the bad side with his editors, Everett's life is a complete mess, punctuated by an endless series of casual (and not especially discreet) infidelities, broken promises and familial neglect. We've seen this sort of character before, but rarely in a film which freely diverts from the storyline to indulge in illumination his ruefully thoughtless manner so attentively, and never in a thriller which gladly stops dead in its tracks to depict our hero racing carelessly through the zoo with his young daughter (Eastwood's own adorable child, Francesca Fisher-Eastwood) so that he can rid himself of her companionship. While there's an obvious parallel between the film's two leading characters -- both of them have special relationships with their daughters and are in need of redemption -- Eastwood makes the point with trademark subtlety. With a refreshing novel-like emphasis on rich characterization, the film's appeal lies with observation of Everett's own personal struggles.
While the film isn't afraid to address ethical issues involving capital punishment -- it's a conceptual challenge to develop a film where the hero has to rescue a man from death row which remains apathetic to the material -- it's not overly concerned with the topic either. While leaning towards an anti-death penalty position, we're not browbeaten with rhetoric -- indeed, a surprisingly gentle and sympathetic eye is cast on the kindly prison guards and compassionate warden, who carry out their duties with stoicism and professionalism. If anything, what's vilified in the picture is narcissism; all of the dislikeable characters in the film are essentially self-serving, and the most unpleasant one reveals himself by the way he attends to his coif.
Eastwood elicits typically solid performances from his ensemble cast, particularly from Washington, who turns in a reserved performance vastly different from his work as a violent would-be rapist in OUT OF SIGHT; he lends Beachum a nobility and dignity that renders his momentary emotional lapses especially stirring. As always, it's great fun to watch Woods in action, but his gesticulating and animated facial expressions produce an energy level which are at odds with the tone of the rest of the film; something more subdued would be in order here.
Loose but never slack, TRUE CRIME feels like a throwback to old-fashion filmmaking, before the days when testosterone narrative jolts replaced inexorbable accumulation of tension. Eastwood oversees the proceedings with a cool confidence and, being the jazz fan that is he, freely riffs the picture with interesting moments which appear narratively cryptic but, in their own quiet way, reveal a great deal. There's an ostensibly pointless scene of a vagrant pestering female pedestrians with lewd behaviour. In most pictures, the hero would knock some sense into the crude lowlife; TRUE CRIME is the sort of movie where the hero gives him ten bucks.
[ *** (out of four stars) | Alternate Rating: B ]
- Alex Fung, March 28, 1999
email: aw220@freenet.carleton.ca
web : http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~aw220/
-- Alex Fung (aw220@freenet.carleton.ca) | http://www.ncf.carleton.ca/~aw220/ "X-FILES fans come up to me in malls expecting me to be able to fill them in on the whole conspiracy. Half the time I have no idea what they're talking about." - Martin Landau
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