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A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

The acting in this movie is really good.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Blistering performances.

"True Crime" is an exciting film to watch...and I am glad I saw it. And, the film brings up some really important reasons why the death penalty, at least in some cases, is a crazy punishment because you cannot undo it once it's done.Clint Eastwood (who is actually too old for this role) plays Steve, a reporter for an Oakland newspaper. He's a mess...a womanizer, a drunk and a jerk. But when he's given a last moment assignment to interview a man about to be executed, something odd happens to Steve...he begins to give a darn about something. And, the more he digs the more the case looks shaky...built upon only eyewitness testimony and circumstantial evidence.This is an uneven film. The portions with Eastwood were okay but not much more. Where the movie really, really shined was in portraying the man on death row and his family...that was marvelously made and Eastwood, in this case, was a better director than actor and got some marvelous performances out of everyone. Worth seeing but uneven and, when you think about it, hard to believe. Plus, that homeless guy...why was he in the film and who thought having him sexually harass ladies was funny or worth including in the story?!

"True Crime," directed by and starring Clint Eastwood, is a taut thriller that goes to the wire as Steve Everett (Eastwood), a journalist and recovering alcoholic, tries to find out what really happened that fateful day when Frank Beechum (Isaiah Washington) entered a convenience store to buy a bottle of steak sauce and wound up being convicted of murdering the store clerk. It's not a campaign born entirely of compassion, however; Everett has had a checkered career that has taken him to the top of his profession, only to have his own errors of judgment (attributed to the bottle) precipitate a swift decline that has ensconced him in a job at a large paper in the Bay area of Northern California writing personality pieces and sidebar profiles. He's not a man of tremendously high ideals or great conviction, and his moral character is somewhat ambiguous, but he demands one thing from himself and everyone else when it comes to reporting a story: The truth. In that he is adamant, and he pursues it without compromise using the one tool in his personal arsenal that has never (when he is sober) failed him, his "nose" for news, that innate sense that unfailingly leads him to that which he is seeking.At first, "True Crime" could be considered as another movie about capital punishment. Well filmed, with a good rhythm and convincing actors, this movie is the perfect movie to rent. But take a second look at "True Crime" and you won't be disappointed. This movie can be seen one, two or three times, it will still unveil a lot of goodies. One can admire how Clint Eastwood compares with subtlety the destiny of Steve Everett and Frank Beechum by using descriptions of similar situations: for example, the two little girls harassing their fathers with multiple demands at a crucial moment. Let's also observe how Clint uses a clever editing to pass from Beechum's cell to Clint's scenes: cigarettes, paintings (the green pastures) for instance are themes that bind the two destinies. Eastwood still has the nose for the truth in this good script. If you favor capital punishment, you may think it through again after seeing this film.Overall rating: 8 out of 10.

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.

The unexpected catalyst, that eventually comes to propel the lead, through Clint Eastwood's 1999 detective thriller True Crime and into a realm of investigation; intuition and towards the truth arrives when a young female journalist on a very specific job is tragically killed in a road traffic accident. It is deemed, by most therein, that the woman was a great girl; a wonderful person and really good at her job – a woman who was "really on top of things" at the time of her death, and yet it appears was careless enough to be doing something around sixty, late at night and on a rain-sodden road having had the odd drink and on a stretch of track notorious for a certain deadly bend. Such stark differences between assumed sentiments and gruff realities having taken a good look at the situation are at the core of True Crime; a film driven by the force of Eastwood both on the screen and off it, in what is a film all about murky underestimations combating with hard-up truths. Fittingly, it is a film about a man placed into the same situation as the aforementioned deceased young journalist; a situation that has already run its course in terms of trials, allegations and musings although doesn't necessarily come out infallible to meaner, stone-wall truths which our lead eventually comes to suspect are omnipresent.Eastwood's character is Steve Everett, a California based journalist with years of experience but a debilitating marriage and a wavy track record of cracking open big stories though making bogus claims when all appeared right to him. The character is one of those old and wily, without necessarily being particularly nice, archetypes of movies of old whom just have that natural gift of being able to work their way through grisly problems and to both spot and comprehend things no one else seemingly can. He enjoys a drink and the company of a younger woman, whilst symptomatically struggles with his wife and infant daughter. His credentials are somewhat impressive, in that he managed to expose political sleaze, in spite of his own lifestyle, more broadly linked to that of the town's mayor, although the attempting to prove a rapist's innocence prior to their controversial confession was an instance in which his ability failed him.He works for that of a hotshot journalist chief named Alan Mann, played in that spitfire fashion by James Woods; a character of whom we are introduced to by way of a long tracking shot down and through the corridors of his building, as he spouts everything he needs to say - the scene concluding in his office which is rife with qualifications and journal covers of past newsworthy events. The case Everett ends up inheriting is that of the reporting on the execution of an African American individual who was given the death penalty for a store robbery and murder. He is Frank Beechum; a man, like Everett, with a wife and infant daughter and is played with effective understated regret by Isaiah Washington. Beechum is due to be killed via lethal injection in a few hours time, immediately rendering what eventually formulates as the crux of the film as a dramatic race against time – the manner in which he will be killed is somewhat agonisingly outlined to us with a measured precision by the warden and his staff, in that we are granted access to the chamber; steal a glance at all the switches and buttons and realise the magnitude of the situation. Additionally, the sheer chasm between the staff there and the likes of Everett, in regards to law enforcers or those of whom merely seek justice, is made prominent when one staff members shrugs upon being asked for an opinion and allows Beechum's court verdict to stand for his stance.The core of the film is Everett's attempt at uncovering something a little more concrete on why it is one would suspect Beechum of innocence; Eastwood doing really well to keep the film moving along, even if we don't necessarily buy into him as the sort of character Everett is - a younger, more aggressive presence in the mould of what Woods pulls off perhaps required. The film carries somewhat of a Bad Lieutenant vibe to it, as this tale of a man with some considerable power and questionable priorities charges through a world attempting to get to the bottom of proceedings plays out. Despite this, the film arrives with much more of a grounded; more accessible procession to it, and veers away from a more hardened edge of anti-heroism and such to the point that it perhaps required to be more dramatic and more biting.The film's element of its lead and his race against the clock is clumsily surmised every so often with inert insertions into proceedings of compositions of clocks or clock faces in some form; a persistent reminder that time is indeed running out, and an element overall which, try as it might, does not necessarily feel as prominent as it might have. In spite of what's at stake, there appears very little on the urgency scale and it lacks a wounding, cut-and-thrust dynamic which may have worked really well. Principally, Everett fights for a truth which will allow a victimised man to return to his wife and young daughter, as he himself disparagingly neglects that of what he has in that exact form. Running on this theme of redemption or righting wrongs, it is an opportunity for him to correct what happened in regards to that case of the misjudged rapist from years gone by; the film functional without necessarily being overly involved, a film which isn't necessarily dull but is safe, uninspiring fare which happens to conclude with the sort of sequence Robert Altman was actually sending up mere years previously in his Hollywood satire The Player. Whoops.