True Crime

USA 1999

Reviewed by John Wrathall

Synopsis

Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.

Following the death of Michelle, his young colleague on the Oakland Tribune, journalist Steve Everett inherits her assignment: interviewing Frank Beechum eight hours before his execution for the murder of a checkout girl. The paper only wants a "human-interest" story, but Everett decides to follow his hunch that Beechum is innocent.

After realising that a chief prosecution witness' testimony is flawed, Everett goes to San Quentin to interview Beechum, who reveals his version of events: he came out of the restroom to find the checkout girl already dead. Now convinced of Beechum's innocence, Everett confronts the prosecutor, who mentions that an unidentified witness left the store moments before the killing.

Breaking into Michelle's apartment, Everett finds the name of the witness "Warren" in her notes. He locates Warren's grandmother, only to learn that Warren is dead. Giving up hope, Everett gets drunk. On a news bulletin half an hour before the execution, he sees a picture of the checkout girl wearing the locket he just saw on Warren's grandmother's neck. Still drunk, Everett races round to the grandmother's house and convinces her to testify. There's no time to get her to San Quentin, so he drives to the home of the Tribune's proprietor, who calls the prison governor in the nick of time. The following Christmas, Everett sees Beechum with his family in the street.

Review

Clint Eastwood's deal with Warner Bros, through his production company Malpaso, allows him to turn out a film a year, but only, it appears, on condition that he alternates his artier, more upmarket projects with straight-down-the line - or, frankly, run-of-the-mill - thrillers. Thus True Crime follows last year's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, just as Absolute Power followed The Bridges of Madison County, and The Rookie followed White Hunter Black Heart.

On paper, True Crime is achingly formulaic: the premise - cynical reporter races against time to save innocent man from execution - has already served multiple screen versions of The Front Page. The film never really bothers with how Everett establishes Beechum's innocence. Although Everett, we discover in the epilogue, wins the Pulitzer Prize for his story, it's surely not for his investigative skills: all he has to do is chance upon the name of a suspect in his colleague's notes and then spot the crucial piece of evidence on the news. The requisite action climax, a car chase with Everett racing through the streets in a last-minute bid to avert the execution, is similarly slapdash. Why on earth didn't he use a telephone? To maintain any momentum while Everett stumbles towards the truth, the film has to keep cutting away to scenes of Beechum's final hours on Death Row, the prison staff's preparations for the execution, and rivalry between Everett and his boss.

With Eastwood's advancing age (he turned 69 in May) limiting his capacity for action, he now has to pay more attention to character than he did in the days of Dirty Harry (1971). And since his apotheosis at the Oscars with Unforgiven, he has been able to attract the necessary talent even to his most routine assignments. True Crime boasts three name screenwriters, including Larry Gross (48 HRS.) and Stephen Schiff, whose years as a staff writer at the New Yorker guarantee a level of authenticity to the film's newspaper background.

Everett is certainly a memorably downbeat creation: a washed-up, womanising hack with a failing marriage and a skeleton in his professional closet (he campaigned to free a rapist who turned out to be guilty). But while Eastwood is prepared to take risks with his screen persona, he will only go so far. In Unforgiven, he lost his stomach for gunfighting, only to be miraculously transformed into a lethal avenger in the final reel. Similarly, in the opening scene of True Crime, the haggard Everett makes a pass at his 23-year-old colleague Michelle and is mercifully rebuffed. But within minutes Michelle is dead (whereas if she'd stayed with him she would have survived), and Everett is baring his chest in bed with his boss' wife - not 45 years' age difference, granted, but a good 30.

The script sets up an interesting contrast between Beechum and Everett: both have a wife and infant daughter, but Everett, who has the freedom to enjoy his family life, is bent on destroying it. The prison scenes, with Beechum clinging to his family as they visit him for the last time, are extremely powerful, thanks to Isaiah Washington's resolute performance as the condemned man. But Everett's domestic scenes are perfunctory in the extreme: a bizarre comic interlude in which he races his daughter round the zoo, and a belated and tired scene in which his wife throws him out. As director, Eastwood's attention seems to wander from scene to scene: if a scene doesn't grab him, he just knocks it out and moves on to the next. Where the film really sparks, however, is in Everett's sparring matches with his editor-in-chief - a gleeful, cigar-chomping performance from James Woods, who relishes such hard-boiled lines as: "Issues are shit which we make up as an excuse to run good stories." Suddenly we're watching The Front Page again - but all too briefly.

Credits

Producers
Clint Eastwood
Richard D. Zanuck
Lili Fini Zanuck
Screenplay
Larry Gross
Paul Brickman
Stephen Schiff
Based upon the novel by Andrew Klavan
Director of Photography
Jack N. Green
Editor
Joel Cox
Production Designer
Henry Bumstead
Music
Lennie Niehaus
©Warner Bros.
Production Companies
Warner Bros. presents
a Zanuck Company/ Malpaso production
Executive Producer
Tom Rooker
Production Office Supervisor
Andrew White
Unit Production Manager
Art Levinson
Location Manager
Kokayi Ampah
Oakland Location Liaison
Don Kincade
Assistant Directors
Robert Lorenz
Dodi L. Rubenstein
T. Rooker
John M. Morse
Script Supervisor
Kerry Lyn McKissick
Casting
Phyllis Huffman
Additional:
Nancy Hays
Jennifer Van Horn
Associate:
Olivia Harris
Camera Operators
Stephen S. Campanelli
Additional:
Stewart Barbee
Maurice Freeman
Michael Santy
Steadicam Operator
Stephen S. Campanelli
Special Effects Co-ordinator
John Frazier
Special Effects
Joe Pancake
Steve Riley
Jack Davis
Tim Moran
Matthew Heron
Howard Frazier
Art Director
Jack G. Taylor Jr
Lead Set Designer
Joe Pacelli
Set Decorator
Richard Goddard
Costume Supervisor
Deborah Hopper
Key Costumer
Lynda Foote
Make-up
Key Artist:
Tania McComas-Campanelli
Artist:
Jim McCoy
Hair
Key Stylist:
Carol A. O'Connell
Stylist:
Patricia Dehaney
Titles/Opticals
Pacific Title/Mirage
Music Editor
Don Harris
Music Scoring Mixer
Bobby Fernandez
Soundtrack
"Little Drummer Boy" by Katherine Davis, Henry Onorati, Harry Simeone, performed by Kenny Burrell; "Why Should I Care" by Clint Eastwood, Carole Bayer Sager, Linda Thompson, performed by Diana Krall
Sound Mixer
Walt Martin
Re-recording Mixers
John Reitz
Dave Campbell
Gregg Rudloff
Supervising Sound Editors
Alan Robert Murray
Bub Asman
Supervising Dialogue Editor
Karen Spangenberg
Dialogue Editors
Lucy Coldsnow-Smith
Karen Wilson
James Matheny
Sound Effects Editors
Mike Dobie
Dave Horton Sr
Adam Johnston
Gary Krivacek
Doug Jackson
Jason King
Donald Flick
ADR
Supervising Editor:
Juno J. Ellis
Editors:
Denise Horta
Stephen Janisz
Foley
Supervisor:
Victoria Martin
Editors:
Matthew Harrison
Scott D. Jackson
Dave Horton Jr
Technical Adviser
Lt. Joy MacFarlane
Stunt Co-ordinator
Buddy Van Horn
Helicopter Pilot
Craig Hosking
Cast
Clint Eastwood
Steve 'Ev' Everett
Isaiah Washington
Frank Louis Beechum
Denis Leary
Bob Findley
Lisa Gay Hamilton
Bonnie Beechum
Diane Venora
Barbara Everett
Bernard Hill
Warden Luther Plunkitt
James Woods
Alan Mann
Michael McKean
Reverend Shillerman
Michael Jeter
Dale Porterhouse
Mary McCormack
Michelle Ziegler
Hattie Winston
Mrs Russel
Penny Bae Bridges
Gail Beechum
Francesca Fisher-Eastwood
Kate Everett
John Finn
Reedy
Laila Robins
Patricia Findley
Sydney Poitier
Jane March
Erik King
pussy man, the tramp
Graham Beckel
Arnold McCardle
Frances Fisher
Cecilia Nussbaum
Marissa Ribisi
Amy Wilson
Christine Ebersole
Bridget Rossiter
Anthony Zerbe
Governor Henry Lowenstein
Nancy Giles
Leesha Mitchell, Frank's lawyer
Tom McGowan
Tom Donaldson
William Windom
Neil, the bartender
Don West
Dr Roger Waters
Lucy Alexis Liu
toy store girl
Dina Eastwood
Wilma Francis
Leslie Griffith
Dennis Richmond
TV anchors
Frank Somerville
afternoon news anchor
Dan Green
field producer
Nicolas Bearde
Reuben Skycock
Frances Lee McCain
Mrs Lowenstein
Rev. Cecil Williams
Reverend Williams
Casey Lee
Warren Russel
Jack Kehler
Mr Ziegler
Colman Domingo
Wally Cartwright
Linda Hoy
counter woman
Danny Kovacs
Atkins
Kelvin Han Yee
Zachary Platt
Kathryn Howell
nurse
Beulah Stanley
female guard
George Maguire
Fredrick Robertson
Bill Wattenburg
radio announcer
Cathy Fithian
Nancy Larson
Roland Abasolo
guard, first night
Michael Halton
guard, execution day
Jade Marx-Berti
waitress
Velica Marie Davis
purse whacker
John B. Scott
Colonel Drummond
Edward Silva
Colonel Hernandez
Jordan Sax
Colonel Badger
Rob Reece
executioner
Walter Brown
Beechum family member
Certificate
15
Distributor
Warner Bros Distributors (UK)
11,465 feet
127 minutes 23 seconds
Dolby digital/Digital DTS sound/SDDS
Colour/Prints by
Technicolor
Last Updated: 20 Dec 2011