|
|
|
|
|
|
True Crime/***** (Rated R)
When President Ronald Reagan looked the American people right in the eye and dared Congress to "Go Ahead, Make My Day" during a budget battle; he was not just being a cleaver politician quoting from a popular movie. President Reagan was tapping into a national sentiment that echoed that line from "Network", "I'm mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore". Indeed when it came to crime, Americans were made has hell. Crime was at record levels. The Nation's Capitol had the highest crime rate. States began executing criminals in large numbers. People were afraid to walk down their streets or be anywhere after dark. Thus when Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry faced some sorry criminal with his oversized 44 Magnum, squinted his eye and said those famous words, audiences all over cheered. Dirty Harry Callahan was our hero. He spoke for us. He was what we wanted our police to be, and secretly, what we wanted to be. Now nearly three decades after Inspector Callahan first put on his badge, things have changed. Cities are safer, For the first time the yearly homicide rate in New York City is under a thousand. Now police are being subject to criticism. The recent events involving Rodney King and Amadou Diallo have made people think differently about the police. In recent months, 11 people were freed from Death Row after they were found to be innocent. It is in this New World that Director/Producer Clint Eastwood revisits the streets that made Dirty Harry famous to ask what the consequences of those attitudes have been. Clint Eastwood plays Steve Everett, a recently sobered reporter for The Oakland Tribune. He has made many enemies in his past, was run out of his job at the New York Times and is now making enemies with his boss Bob Findley (Dennis Leary); when it is discovered he is having an affair with Findley's wife. After the accidental death of a young colleague, Everett is given the task of writing a simple human interest "side-bar" piece to accompany the paper's coverage of the imminent execution of convicted killer Frank Beachum (Isaiah Washington). Of course, just as Inspector Callahan ignored the orders of his bosses, Everett seeks to discover the truth of Beachum's guilt. Without giving away the plot, Everett has to fight his boss, his paper and his own inner demons to discover the truth behind the murder that will get Beachum executed in less than 12 hours. In Steve Everett, Eastwood gives us a character that can be seen as a Dirty Harry who wields a pen instead of an oversized pistol. In a world full of "second-hand smoke" and "sexual harassment manuals", Everett smokes with abandon and orders the female staff to get him coffee. Just like Dirty Harry, we are even treated to the now famous Dirty Harry moment where our hero confronts his boss and "hands in his badge" so he can search for the truth. Isaiah Washington delivers in Frank Beachum a character that might have been the very kind of criminal that audiences would have cheered into death row decades earlier. He is accused of the horrible act of murdering a young, pregnant store clerk. He says he is innocent and that he has found God. But don't they all. Yet in order to teach us a lesson, Eastwood paints a different picture. We meet Beachum's wife, played with great strength and sympathy by Lisa Gay Hamiliton (last seen in "Beloved") and his young daughter. In the Death Row visitor's room his wife is crying and the daughter is drawing a picture with a box of crayons. In a very moving scene, the daughter cries that she relizes that she has lost her green crayon. We then cut to the prison staff searching the wife's car, we think for contraband. When Beachum's guard receives a phone call, we find that what they were looking for, and what was found, was none other than the lost green crayon. In this moment, Eastwood makes us confront the humanity of those behind bars. In the end, we realize that just as Dirty Harry told us why we should have no sympathy for criminals, Steve Everett shows us why we just might be wrong. Studio: Warner Brothers
|
