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Early in True Crime, craggy old reporter Steve Everett (Clint
Eastwood) is trying to make time with 23-year-old female colleague Michelle
Ziegler (Mary McCormack) in a bar. Disillusioned with life on the Oakland
Tribune, she tells him, "I'm going to go back and get my PhD, and write
about things that matter."
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Unfortunately Michelle perishes in a car crash after this little bit of
post-graduate humour, so the comic relief in the film has to take a
different course. But her death leaves a hole in the roster, so Tribune
editors Alan Mann (James Woods) and Bob Findley (Denis Leary) decide Everett
can take over her assignment interviewing a black man condemned to die by
lethal injection for the murder of a white woman.
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However, since they regard Everett -- a man with a nose for news but whose
drinking and dalliances have got him booted out of newsrooms across the
country -- as unpredictable, they limit the job to "a human interest sidebar"
on the convict's feelings.
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Bit 4
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Frank Beachum (Isaiah Washington) is on Death Row following the shooting of
a store clerk who owed him money. But his appeal for clemency is doomed to
fail, as Beachum won't express remorse for a crime he says he didn't commit.
Apparently the sole witness is a passer-by, Dale Porterhouse (Michael
Jeter), who has grown accustomed to the media spotlight. Everett's
sensitive nose tells him something doesn't fit, and he starts to delve into
the case as the clock ticks on towards the execution deadline.
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As a character says, everyone wants in on the action, from the media and
their pet performer Porterhouse, to the Rev. Shillerman (Michael McKean),
obsessed with getting a last-minute confession from Beachum. Everett's
sleuthing is complicated by the affair he is having with Findley's wife and
its consequences, and also by the commitment he made to his estranged wife
to spend a day at the zoo with their baby daughter (played by the director's
daughter Francesca).
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Eastwood has assembled a dream cast for this tale of suspense, where the
race against time makes for a tighter structure than possible in his
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Parallel to the solving
of the crime is the progress of the director's character, a dinosaur in a
modern landscape.
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Like Beachum, Everett has come to the end of the line. Like a moth to a
flame, he is still called to the bar, but now the drink is tomato juice and
the swizzle stick made of celery. Hoping his game abstinence might count
for something in reuniting his family, Everett is still foiled by his other
old addiction to women. And modern women can prove more complicated than in
the old days; even though Everett has a fellow dinosaur in Mann, the older
relic has to be reminded by his younger boss to stay away from female
trouble.
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On the subject of older relics, I offer just one warning about True
Crime: although Eastwood as Everett looks no more desiccated than
many other journalists of his vintage, parental guidance is recommended for
viewers likely to be affronted by the sight of a 69-year-old clad only in a
towel.
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Details
True Crime, by Warner Bros., 1999.
Director: Clint Eastwood.
Screenplay: Larry Gross, Paul Brickman and Stephen Schiff, from the novel by Andrew Klavan.
Cinematography: Jack N. Green.
Production Design: Henry Bumstead.
Editing: Joel Cox.
Costume Supervisor: Deborah Hopper.
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Isaiah Washington, Denis Leary, Lisa Gay Hamilton, James Woods, Bernard Hill, Diane Venora, Michael McKean, Michael Jeter.
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Citation reference for this article
MLA style:
Shane Lewis. "Sensitive Old Age Guy: 'True Crime'." M/C Reviews 31 May 99.
[your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/screen/crime.html>.
Chicago style:
Shane Lewis, "Sensitive Old Age Guy: 'True Crime'," M/C Reviews 31 May 99,
<http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/screen/crime.html> ([your date of access]).
APA style:
Shane Lewis. (1999) Sensitive old age guy: 'True crime'. M/C Reviews 31 May 99.
<http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/screen/crime.html> ([your date of access]).
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![[image]](http://www.truecrimethemovie.com/img/ip3.gif)