(Universal) Starring: Denzel Washington, Vicellous Reon Shannon, Deborah Kara Unger, Liev Schreiber, John Hannah, Dan Hedaya, Debbi Morgan, Clancy Brown. Screenplay: Armyan Bernstein and Dan Gordon, based on _The Sixtheenth Round_ by Rubin "Hurricane" Carter and _Lazarus and the Hurricane_ by Sam Chaiton and Terry Swinton. Producers: Armyan Bernstein, John Ketcham and Norman Jewison. Director: Norman Jewison. MPAA Rating: R (profanity, violence) Running Time: 146 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
There are times when I'm watching a film and I just know it has fallen victim the demon Expectations. Audiences expect certain things from certain kind of films -- they expect love stories to end with a kiss, they expect horror films to end with a jolt, they expect action films to end with a big chase and/or a big explosion. The ebb and flow of traditional narrative becomes part of the way people watch movies, and film-makers know this. The familiarity is comforting; it makes it easy for people to keep up. Scripts are structured not exactly to give the people what they want, but to give them what they know -- which, for all practical purposes, is the same thing.
THE HURRICANE is a drama that follows a legal proceding, and it gives the audience what they expect by ending with a verdict. It's also a disappointing resolution for a story that's actually about so much more than guilt or innocence. The subject is real-life boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter (Denzel Washington), a middleweight contender whose hard life takes its hardest turn when he is convicted in a robbery/murder case and sentenced to life in prison. Carter never stops insisting on his innocence, however, and eventually turns his story into an autobiography called _The Sixteenth Round_. That book finds its way into the hands of Lesra (Vicellous Reon Shannon), an African-American teen learning at last to read with the help of three Canadian social activist/guardians: Lisa (Deborah Kara Unger), Terry (John Hannah) and Sam (Liev Schreiber). When Lesra becomes convinced Carter has been wrongly accused, he enlists the aid of "The Canadians" to free "The Hurricane" after nearly 20 years in prison.
The heart and soul of THE HURRICANE comes from the relationship between Carter and Lesra, a relationship that begins as a pen pal correspondence and climaxes with an emotional prison visit between the two. Once THE HURRICANE finds that hook, it truly begins to soar. The biographical background material, which had felt somewhat labored, starts to flesh out a portrait of Carter's background of distrust of any force outside himself. Denzel Washington, after a number of roles in which his commanding presence was lost on mediocre material, turns Carter into a character with a fascinating arc. After growing inward for years as a defense mechanism, Carter finds himself in the dangerous position of growing to care once again about life in the outside world. Watching him overcome his initial suspicion of the Canadians' motives is intriguing; watching him begin to collapse under the burden of hope is engrossing.
That dynamic -- the tense relationships between Carter and those who sought to help him, and how he responds to their efforts -- is what THE HURRICANE is really about. Unfortunately, the script begins taking the story into predictable, uninspired directions. The Canadians encounter road blocks from reluctant would-be witnesses; they're harrassed by the racist police detective (Dan Hedaya) who originally engineered the frame-up. The investigation consistently suffers from a sense of manufactured drama, as well as from the complete absence of character development for the three Canadians (they've been compressed from nine real-life individuals, so we can be thankful for small favors). It's obvious we're heading for a showdown before the bench, and a series of impassioned speeches about justice. And frankly, I didn't really care, because I knew every minute spent on the details of the case was a minute not spent exploring Carter as a character.
There is far too much to like about Washington's performance -- and, to give credit where it's due, about newcomer Shannon's performance as well -- for THE HURRICANE not to be ultimately satisfying. The agonizing sequence that finds Carter slowly losing his mind in solitary confinement is a particular triumph; no other film has ever made the loneliness of one's own thoughts seem like such a punishment. THE HURRICANE simply loses focus on its strengths at times, wandering into familiar territory for its emotional catharsis. In a sense, Armyan Bernstein and Dan Gordon deserve kudos for finding a compelling perspective in fusing their two source materials. It's hard not to wish that the film hadn't been more willing to let the audience find that perspective as well.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 hurricane forces: 7.
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