THE HURRICANE (1999) / ** 1/2
Directed by Norman Jewison. Screenplay by Armyan Bernstein and Dan Gordon, based on the books "The Sixteenth Round" by Rubin Carter and "Lazarus and the Hurricane" by Sam Chaiton and Terry Swinton. Starring Denzel Washington, Vicellous Reon Shannon, Dan Hedaya. Running time: 146 minutes. Rated AA for controversial subject matter and offensive language. Reviewed on February 23rd, 2000.
By SHANNON PATRICK SULLIVAN
"The Hurricane" is the story of boxer Rubin Carter (Denzel Washington), a middleweight boxing champion who in 1966 was convicted of three murders, on the basis of a case steeped in racial prejudice. During Carter's stay in prison, his plight drew the attention of "the famous and the infamous", including celebrities such as Bob Dylan and Muhammed Ali. Despite this, Carter remained imprisoned until 1985, when a teenager named Lesra Martin (Vicellous Reon Shannon) -- inspired by Carter's autobiography "The Sixteenth Round" -- took up his cause.
"The Hurricane" has many things going for it. In particular, there is Washington's performance as Hurricane Carter, which has won him a Golden Globe award and an Emmy nomination. Washington practically disappears into the character, suffusing Carter with nobility, passion and determination. This is not an easy role to play: Washington's challenge is to portray Carter as intense without turning him into a fanatic. He succeeds, with a performance broad enough to permit Carter not just great strength but also moments of weakness, especially as Lesra's efforts start to bear fruit. "I'm fifty years old," Carter laments to his lawyers at one point. He has been in prison more than half his life, and we feel the weight of every one of those years.
The defining moment of Washington's performance comes when, at the start of his life sentence, Carter refuses to wear a prison uniform because he will not wear the clothes of a guilty man. He is sent into solitary confinement for ninety days to reconsider his protest. In many ways, he never emerges: to cope with his imprisonment, Carter isolates himself from the rest of the world. He focuses on honing his mind and body, and congregates more with his own inner demons than with his fellow inmates.
The scenes of Carter in jail are "The Hurricane's" most powerful, but in a sense are really just a backdrop for one of the movie's main themes, about redemption through the written word. This is made clear from the start: an early scene sees an uncharacteristically desperate Carter pleading with a friendly prison guard (Clancy Brown) that his cell not be searched, for fear of having his partly-completed autobiography taken. It is by writing his story, and by reading voraciously, that Carter survives the prison experience. "The Sixteenth Round" becomes the first book the barely-literate Lesra ever buys, and through it he discovers Hurricane Carter's plight. Carter and Lesra spend much of the movie communicating not by phone but by letters. And by the end, this odyssey of paper and ink has benefited both their lives.
Performances from the rest of the cast are respectable but not as well-rounded. This is not entirely surprising; "The Hurricane" is Carter's story, after all, and he deserves the spotlight. But the lack of development of the supporting cast is disappointing, particularly in the case of Lesra, a young man from a broken home whose encounters with Carter help him realize his own potential. Shannon's acting is capable, but the growth of his character is conveyed more by what we are told than what we are shown, transgressing a fundamental rule of storytelling.
Given rather less to do are Lesra's guardians (Deborah Unger, Liev Schreiber, John Hannah). They act virtually as a gestalt, often referred to simply (and irritatingly) as "the Canadians". We never really get a firm idea of why they do what they do -- why they are together, why they are taking care of Lesra, why they do so much to help Carter (even moving to New Jersey from Ontario!) -- and it seems little effort was expended in making them anything more than plot facilitators.
I was nine years old when Rubin Carter was released from prison and have no recollection of the events surrounding his eventual freedom, so I can offer little comment as to the historical accuracy of "The Hurricane". Indeed, I don't think a film need be bound by the letter of the truth, if a certain amount of license will make it better artistically. But I have to wonder if the wholesale invention of Detective Della Pesca (Dan Hedaya) does "The Hurricane" service from either a factual or an aesthetic point of view.
In the movie, Della Pesca is the man mainly responsible for setting up Hurricane Carter, a deed which is the culmination of a lifelong grudge against the boxer. In reality, he never existed. He is intended, I suppose, to be a synthesis of all those who helped put Carter away, but Della Pesca himself is so crucial to "The Hurricane" that it is difficult to imagine how things 'really' happened. Moreover, he is almost embarrassingly one-dimensional, given no more characterization beyond his vaguely-motivated hatred for Carter. It almost feels as though Della Pesca should have worn a black hat and a Snidely Whiplash-style moustache.
Indeed, the movie's biggest problem is that the story itself ends up feeling excessively Hollywood-ized. Nowhere is this more true than in the climactic courtroom scenes, which -- true to reality or not -- feel like a disappointing cop-out after two hours of Washington's enthralling characterization. There were many issues "The Hurricane" could have dealt with more fully: the maturation of Lesra, the way an entire justice system can be blinded by prejudice, even the question of whether Carter really might have committed the crimes (the movie doesn't even raise the possibility). Instead of challenging us, the film settles for a routine trial scene surprisingly lacking in dramatic value, as if director Norman Jewison knew the ending was uninspired.
We already know how the movie is going to end, so emphasizing the court proceedings is unnecessary. It is a shame that so gripping a performance as Washington's winds up being subordinate to a cliche. "The Hurricane" would have been better served by keeping its focus on the characters and their personal journeys, instead of the events through which they traveled.
Copyright © 2000 Shannon Patrick Sullivan. Archived at http://www.physics.mun.ca/~sps/movies/TheHurricane.html
-- _______________________________________________________________________ / Shannon Patrick Sullivan | "We are all in the gutter, but some of us \ | | are looking at the stars." | \ shannon@morgan.ucs.mun.ca | -- Oscar Wilde /
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