Director: Clint Eastwood Year: 1999 Country: U.S. Gender: Drama / Thriller
Rating: 7.5/10
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Isaiah Washington, James Woods, Denis Leary, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Diane Venora, Bernard Hill, Michael McKean, Michael Jeter and Mary McCormack
Steve Everett (Clint Eastwood) is an investigative journalist who has serious problems: it is an alcoholic who has only two months without drinking, but is, above all, an unrepentant womanizer. This type of life has discredited not only professionally, but has also ruined his marriage. Find an unexpected opportunity for rehabilitation when he was commissioned an interview with a condemned man on the eve of his execution. Despite this, decides to investigate on their own and some evidence lead you to suspect that the man will be executed is innocent. However, it has very little time to get the necessary information to make possible the pardon and prevent the execution of the sentence. Clint Eastwood, which for me has always been such violent, rude and nasty filthy associated with the character of Harry, was revealed to me ike a great director in a film often underestimated and forgotten as in "White Hunter
, Heart N egro " (1990). After a strange magnetism driven attended review their films and I found "
Unforgiven" (1992), a film that is today considered a classic, and was a result of that work, that I became a him unconditionally, even at the beginning having to defend this masterpiece among my friends, even in the head with the stereotype that I shared months earlier.
Eastwood's films since then and like that of Scorsese and Tarantino, it has become for me a landscape known and loved, and indeed the film and formal coherence of the work of this man has put me through such moments do not always like this masterful western, but very noticeable. For me, watching films of Eastwood is like coming home and relaxing after a hard day's work. You know what you see and what you'll encounter and simply and without further complications, you just go with the cliches of his films. And is that Eastwood has built a character to suit himself and in his last ten films, simply perpetuates making variations of it all rather different and nuanced, but with a single source. The old Steppenwolf representing representing this time in this single which extends only to the apartment at night after a hard day of work, and the first thing is to put a jazz album, then approaches the cart of drinks is served whiskey, was barefoot, to feel relaxed and begins to think about the article of the day, in the case of murder or some old love. That lone wolf, still retains a high power of seduction, and an intuition that goes beyond professionalism. His misogyny and machismo is just self-defensive front and more sarcastic than anything else, and above all, a good soldier, tired, worn out and disillusioned from all causes, but is always willing to submit a final battle.
In "True Crime" is the tape in question, and that fits perfectly in this chain of movie series directed and performed or interpreted only in recent years, would be a much more complex film the rest (although not without some of these traits), we find a journalist and a death penalty case. Eastwood is a man who has never finished politically located, to the extent that you do not know if it is liberal, conservative, Democrat or conservative Democrat, what is clear is that in his defense of Savannah gay character in "Midnight in the
Garden of Good and Ma l "(1997) and in this argument against the death penalty is "True Crime", demonstrates a commitment to social, friendly though, and only moderately critical. Eastwood in this film we are introduced to a protagonist libertarian and sixties, broad moral (he has an affair with his boss's wife), of course steppe, and unwilling to follow the rules. Steve Everett is a man who bases his nose for news in their intuition, experience, and uses these weapons to autorevindicarse in a world of young sharks who seek a termination of obsessive jealousy and because they know they are with a man superior. The test he needs to prove he still is ahead of them is the resolution of a death penalty case, a black man, wrongfully accused of murder was unclear, in which a rack of chips and racial prejudice are the keys to the enigma.
The film, admittedly is somewhat irregular and missed by his epilogue added, but contains some images of the best Eastwood in recent years, and moments of great cinema: He may not adequately appreciated James Woods (another old school) plays here also another wolf, and the dialogues that intersects with Eastwood in delusional and counter-charged replicas affection and sarcasm seem drawn from the best scripts of Wilder's films or Hawks. These two characters are really two journalists "hawksianos" in a world of sugar and butter "yuppie" that tends to devour them, and they laugh in their faces. On the other hand, we have the research that is the most topical and predictable (except the initial accident and the registration of Eastwood's house the girl, of course regret that skewed young) and we also sentenced to life in this death, and his last moments with his family. Eastwood wheel this time of the condemned, with coldness and hardness without falling into sentimentality, and achieving the critical pass in humanity detached and small details like the picture of the daughter of the offender or in the embrace of husbands. Eastwood is among the few that has addressed the issue of the death penalty through the thriller and yet neither trivialized nor has used it for a political pamphlet. In fact, the most interesting of this fine thriller is the approach to a topic as thorny as the death penalty through a few but expressive scenes.
However, the film has a plane that lingers in the viewer's memory above all. A plane, which in the case of a more committed European director would have been the last of the film, and here gives an epilogue pattern unnecessary. The plane in question is the fist woman convicted of hitting the glass with chilling desperation, trying to stop an inevitable death, which at first seems now irreversible and that his five fingers on the pulse of the American justice and current mindless subject now rules the destinies of half the world (which by then was in Texas only). But rather by the imperatives of study, or by its own conviction, after that brutal and hard level, it produces a fade and we see a Christmas picture in which the protagonist once redeemed and demonstrated their superiority over their young heads, intersects with the offender in the distance and returned a look of mutual appreciation, as both have helped (to escape a death, and prove that it still serves for journalism, the other). Epilogue, which weakens the speech and the film of a severe and notorious, but that does not lose the values \u200b\u200bthat underlie all these films by Eastwood that lately we have come, beloved and pleasing, with an unmistakable aroma classic and to confirm as a major or at least most important filmmakers of our time.
"True Crime" is surrounded by an atmosphere powerfully intense, exciting, charming addition and soulful music by Lennie Niehaus, who accompanies all the action subtly triggers the end a melancholy score own film city black background Christmas dress. Undoubtedly Eastwood film shows with each one of the great and, well, I acknowledge that I have "hypnotized." Because Clint is smell, and that's a fact, Eastwood is a director / actor worthy of praise is all sorts of issues and not leave anyone indifferent. Without being one of the best works of this great director and actor, "True Crime" is an intriguing film while a strong argument against the death penalty. Maybe this time Eastwood wanted to show the world that after the tough guy that has always embodied in the film hides a person with deep thoughts. The good character of Steve Everett is that from the outset clear that Eastwood is not the archetypal saint who can save the condemned. His extramarital affairs, his past alcohol and other defects contribute to the dehumanization of the hero, although it also remains something of effectiveness to the plot, gives a different perspective. The story does not deceive: the system is corrupted by politicians, journalists and viewers, bloodthirsty lawyers and morbidity of death. And Clint hits hard, and boy does it hit!
"Eastwood has flair
