|
"We're going to argue the merits of journalism?" Occasionally a "human-interest sidebar" will save a life, so learns the grizzled Oakland Tribune newshound (Clint Eastwood) with nothing left but his nose for the truth. He drops by the office on his day off and lands a late colleague's assignment, the interview with the death row inmate (Isaiah Washington) rekindles his investigative instinct, the hunch to prove the prisoner's innocence races against the lethal-injection appointment at midnight. "Everyone lies, pal. I'm just here to write it down." Power of the press, as Capra would have it, though the key model is Losey's Time without Pity. Individuals and institutions, the warden (Bernard Hill) who separates the convict from his wife (LisaGay Hamilton) also mobilizes his men to find his daughter's crayon. In a tale of doubles and match cuts, Washington's monument of solemnity contrasts with Eastwood's philandering-boozing-smoking wreck, the classical hero "just kinda coming apart here." (Diane Venora as the missus at the end of her rope pushes a discarded wedding ring at him: "If this were a bullet, you'd be dead.") A supporting gallery out of The Front Page, newsroom cuckold (Denis Leary), weaselly chaplain (Michael McKean), punctilious witness (Michael Jeter), bereft materfamilias (Hattie Winston). Above all, James Woods exulting in the farcical fireworks of the Tribune editor who shares the public's appetite for "sex organs and blood" stories. "I can't fart loud enough to express my opinion!" Intensity and relaxation in characteristic play, with one of Eastwood's greatest moments—the camera leans into the void of a smashed windshield and dissolves to the beaming face of the director's daughter adorned with colored bandaids. The Christmas miracle of justice cannot hide the dilapidated knight's solitude, "Santa Claus rides alone." With Mary McCormack, Laila Robins, Marissa Ribisi, Frances Fisher, Anthony Zerbe, Christine Ebersole, Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Colman Domingo, William Windom, and Lucy Liu.
--- Fernando F. Croce |