True Crime Review

Frank Beachum, Isaiah Washington, is about to die for the shooting murder of a pregnent white shop assistant, a murder he claims he didn`t commit. When the Oakland Tribune reporter assigned to cover the execution dies in a late night car crash, the job is assigned by editor Alan Mann, James Woods, to veteran Steve Everett, Clint Eastwood. Everett is a burnt-out case who, though married and with a daughter, is a voracious womaniser who spends much of the previous night with the wife of his paper`s city editor, Denis Leary. There`s a lot of bad vibes around the Tribune office when Everett gets a hunch Beachum may really be innocent, and sets out to prove it... If ever there was a classical film story it`s this one, with its race against time to save an innocent man. But there`s a lot more to True Crime than just the familiar, though terribly suspenseful, plot. Like several other recent Clint Eastwood films, it`s a study of a very flawed man seizing one last chance to make a difference. Everett has failed as a journalist and as a husband (the film pointedly contrasts his sterile family life with that of the born-again Christian Beachum), he`s old fashioned in the worst sense. It`s a wonderful portrayal, just one of many fine performances in a totally gripping, intelligent and beautifully made film.Margaret`s Comments:The cliched set-up of a journalist investigating the innocence of a man on death row at the last possible moment is given a whole new texture by Clint Eastwood in his most enjoyable film of late. Clint relishes the wink he slyly communicates to the audience by playing an unreconstructed womaniser, an ex-drunk and, more importantly, a man for whom only two body parts count - his nose, his investigative nose that is, and his penis. This is wryly acknowledged in the film, but in fact it is the film`s tragic subtext. The scene he plays with his wife - Diane Venora - after she finds out he`s been unfaithful, pathetically so, has such a reality to it that it`s devastating. It`s not fun at all, in contrast to the scenes with James Woods, the newspaper boss who half appreciates, half envies his recalcitrant employee. Woods dominates these scenes and fortunately Eastwood lets him.This is a film about discrimination. Of women and of African Americans. It`s no accident that it`s a black man on death row and It`s telling that when our hero tracks down a potential witness to a black neighbourhood he confronts the grandmother who tells him that `a lot of innocent people have died in this neighbourhood. Funny I don`t remember seeing you around then.` Well his nose wasn`t involved in those stories. The film`s about male ego as well. It`s not about the newspaper business or justice, it`s about big things in the texture of individual lives. It`s fitting that at the end Clint`s character has the only two body parts that have been important to him. Others are left with a lot more.The plot is often implausible and it`s a pity that the character of the prison chaplain is so overtly vile but this fillm has a lot to offer audiences.