March 19, 1999 | Clint Eastwood once again demonstrates his master craftsmanship on both sides of the camera in True Crime, a beat-the-clock thriller with an edge of moral gravity. The movie generates a satisfying amount of suspense, but that is only part of its appeal. As usual, Eastwood directs with unhurried attentiveness to detail and unfashionable disregard for short attention spans. At 68, he is one of the last of the Hollywood classicists, and the measured pace of his storytelling is perfectly suited to telling what is basically a character-driven story.
Eastwood wisely cast himself as the character who does most of the driving: Steve Everett, a burnt-out newspaper reporter who reignites his passionate professionalism while his personal life short-circuits. Thanks to the intervention of a friendly editor-in-chief (James Woods in a profanely funny performance), Everett has landed a last-chance job at the Oakland Tribune. He has a loving wife — apparently, the latest in a long line of unfortunate Mrs. Everetts — and a lovely young daughter. He also has a roving eye and an overly active libido. When he can’t interest a much younger colleague in an after-hours fling, he casually shifts gears and finds a more willing playmate — who just happens to be the wife of his stiff-necked city editor (Denis Leary).
But when the younger colleague dies in a car crash, Everett must handle his late co-worker’s final assignment, an interview with a convicted killer who’s scheduled for a lethal injection. Frank Beachum (Isaiah Washington) claims he was falsely accused of shooting a pregnant convenience-store clerk, and railroaded to Death Row. Everett has heard — and written — this sort of story many times before. The big difference is, this time, he actually believes it. Trouble is, he has less than 12 hours to uncover enough exonerating evidence to win a stay of execution.
Working from a smoothly efficient script adapted (by Larry Gross, Paul Brickman and Stephen Schiff) from a novel Andrew Klavan, Eastwood propels True Crime along two parallel tracks, skillfully sustaining a sense of urgency by cutting back and forth between Beachum’s long goodbye to his family before he walks the final mile, and Everett’s increasingly frantic efforts to find something, anything, that might help save the convict’s life. In the process, of course, the reporter also hopes to save himself, or least get a shot at redemption.
Eastwood refuses to make things easy for the audience. He wants to rub our noses in the contradictions: Everett is ingratiating and insufferable, sincere and selfish, a dedicated seeker of truth and a ruthlessly amoral SOB. To illuminate all the aspects of this complex character, Eastwood gets a great deal of help from his favorite lead actor. Indeed, his performance is all the more impressive for his refusal to make Everett either conventionally likable or colorfully roguish. Rather, he plays the reporter as a deeply flawed scoundrel who is good enough at what he does to do good in spite of himself.
Among the exceptional supporting players, Leary is atypically and effectively restrained, Washington is memorably poignant without obvious pleadings for sympathy, and Michael Jeter is intriguingly ambiguous as a witness who may very well believe he is telling his version of the truth. And James Woods steals every scene that isn’t nailed down as the only man in Oakland who has even less shame than our tarnished anti-hero.
