True Crime (1999)

Steve Everett (Clint Eastwood) is a womanizing married recovering alcoholic. He returns to his journalist job at Oakland Tribune after rehab. A young reporter dies in an accident and he assigned her interview with death row inmate Frank Beechum (Isaiah Washington). Beechum was a troubled youth until he became born-again and married to Bonnie (LisaGay Hamilton). He's scheduled to be executed in a few hours for the murder of a pregnant store clerk but Everett starts to wonder about his guilt.There is a functional investigative crime mystery in this movie although the plot isn't very surprising. Clint Eastwood has filled it with too much uninteresting filler. Some of it is really cheesy. I think he wants Reverend Shillerman to be comic relief which really doesn't work. The most annoying is the Hollywood high speed chase to end the investigation. It's utterly ridiculous. Maybe he could call the governor or the prison or the wife. It's a bad attempt to make it artificially exciting.

True Crime (1999): Dir: Clint Eastwood / Cast: Clint Eastwood, Isaiah Washington, Denis Leary, Michael McKean, Lisa Gay Hamilton: Typical Clint Eastwood thriller where an innocent victim is arrested. Title regards Eastwood as a reporter and the reality he is undertaking. He is a womanizer who is well aware of his lifestyle. A female friend dies in a car accident and a story she was doing prior catches his attention. Isaiah Washington is sentenced to death by lethal injection in 24 hours for the murder of a pregnant woman. Eastwood visits the crime site and comes away believing the guy's innocence. I could have lived without the on screen needle injection. Eastwood makes everything uncertain despite its lackluster visual appeal. He is effective as a man who goes to great lengths to insure the truth. Washington is well cast as the inmate who waits for the clock to tick down. Unfortunately supporting roles are not nearly as interesting. Denis Leary has a dreary role as a co-worker whose wife was involved with Eastwood. Michael McKean plays a corrupt Priest and this will no doubt turn off religious crowds. It doesn't have as much intrigue with the locations as Absolute Power does in the White House and a two way mirror. This is not one of Eastwood's best films as is Absolute Power, but it does contain a strong theme that regards sacrifice and justice that pull through despite its recycled concept. Score: 8 / 10

Good suspense mystery but to be honest, it has just about every cliché in the book. The innocent condemned man, the hard-nosed battle scarred journalist with the marriage on the rocks thanks to an affair with a colleague's wife and the condemned man saved from the fatal injection at the last possible moment (perhaps even beyond it). And while I realise Steve's on-screen daughter is the real-life daughter of Clint Eastwood, there is a perception of disbelief at a man looking on the wrong side of 70 having a kid of about 5. Add to that this man who appears to be a nursing home candidate having a wife looking more like a daughter and having a fling with a woman who had a husband in his prime and finally in the last scene flirting with a girl who should have called him "grandpa", the credibility got a little lost. And did I mention the clapped out old clunker of a car held together with gaffer tape in the style of Columbo? Don't get me wrong, Eastwood is a damn fine actor and director but the lead role in this one should have gone to someone thirty years his junior. Still a good story told but in the end, nothing we haven't seen before.

That Clint Eastwood is a great man who deeply loves justice is evident in all his movies, and "True crime" is no exception, indeed it's a movie focused on a desperate search for justice, against a whole insensitive judiciary system. A system which seems to disregard the most evident proofs of innocence, and just needs a guilty one to prove its efficiency. I was captured by the story progressing with mounting tension till the last second, and towards a finale that was not so predictable. I liked the character of Everett, however disdainful, unfaithful, even annoying, Eastwood creates a perfect antihero, ironically but lucidly demolishing the brutal and often absurd American judiciary system, surrounded by latent but still strong racism, and often supported by the connivance of common people and even by a merciless clerical intrusion. As in all Eastwood's movies, the director is in full control of the difficult theme handled, he offers the viewer all the necessary elements to rebuild the story, offering a wide perspective of analysis, but leaving the viewer the right to judge the events narrated. The usual honest look of a very wise and sensitive director, who also respects the intelligence and and freedom of thought of his audience.