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