MURDER IN THE FIRST
A film review by Vijay Ramanujan
Copyright 1995 Vijay Ramanujan
Story: A prison inmate, originally jailed for petty theft, is abused and tortured after a prison escape. Three years in solitary confinement leave him incapable of dealing with the world. Immediately upon release into the general prison population he kills the man who foiled his escape. The trial turns into a condemnation of Alcatraz and the prison system.
Cast: Kevin Bacon (Henri Young--inmate), Christian Slater (James Stamphill--lawyer), Gary Oldman (Glenn--warden).
Opening in blackness with the sounds of a botched prison escape, this movie starts out black and horrifying. The first half hour of this movie is powerful, well executed and, at times, hard to watch. Gary Oldman is menacing, as usual, and has (necessarily) dispensed with the wicked charm he has shown in previous movies such as Dracula and The Professional. The torture of the Henri Young is shown brutally, with only occasional flashes of lighting, and a soundtrack of screaming from Bacon and hushed talking from Oldman. Taken out of solitary after three years, Young is incapable of mixing with the prison population. Every noise startles him, and he cringes, hiding from everyone and everything. When a fellow inmate points out the man who ratted on his escape scheme, Young kills the man with a spoon in full view of the prison population.
These opening scenes are the most effective in the movie. They are grittier and more difficult than anything else the movie has to provide. Moving from the prison life to the scenes of interrogation of Young by his young attorney, James Stamphill, the movie is occasionally brilliant, mostly watchable and sometimes slow.
Stamphill, in a series of alternatingly great and corny scenes tries to get Young to say anything, managing only to get him to talk about Joe Dimaggio and baseball. As Young opens up to his new friend, the news of brutality comes as a shock to Stamphill, who tries to turn the impossible case into a name-making chance to indict the entire prison system.
As the trial progresses, the movie picks up some of its grit again, shying away from the character study of James Stamphill and Stamphill's interplay with his brother and his associate. Instead, the focus once again becomes the case, and the lengths to which the warden and others are willing to go to surpress the case. The trial scenes are once again powerful, instead of simply interesting. There is very little in the way of brilliant courtroom tactics, and the courtroom serves only as a forum in which Stamphill can confront the warden and others in the name of Henri Young.
The ending is neither too happy to be realistic nor too sad to be watchable. It stays in character with the rest of the film.
The acting is probably the main draw in this film. Kevin Bacon is fantastic in his role, doing more with his body language and facial expressions than his lines, which are often not-connected to the matter at hand. Slater is solid in a part which requires him, more than anything else, to not take anything away from Bacon, and Oldman is his usual self. There really are few other characters worthy of note.
4/5 *
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