Very disappointed :(

recommended

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

There was so much laughter in the theater when I saw this movie. It was making me mad, because I had paid a fair amount to watch this thing. However, as the movie went on, I found myself having a hard time not laughing either. The script as awful. The acting was terrible. The direction, horrific. It was just a really bad movie that looked like it was made by a first time director, with a learning disability. Then there is the total lack of any realism. Growing up I was such a big fan of the actor that was Clint Eastwood. As an adult, I cannot believe how truly terrible he is as a director. And the uncomfortable romance scenes had be squirming. Hey gramps, quit being a pervert. But I digress, horrible and unrealistic movie.

Good suspense mystery but to be honest, it has just about every cliché in the book. The innocent condemned man, the hard-nosed battle scarred journalist with the marriage on the rocks thanks to an affair with a colleague's wife and the condemned man saved from the fatal injection at the last possible moment (perhaps even beyond it). And while I realise Steve's on-screen daughter is the real-life daughter of Clint Eastwood, there is a perception of disbelief at a man looking on the wrong side of 70 having a kid of about 5. Add to that this man who appears to be a nursing home candidate having a wife looking more like a daughter and having a fling with a woman who had a husband in his prime and finally in the last scene flirting with a girl who should have called him "grandpa", the credibility got a little lost. And did I mention the clapped out old clunker of a car held together with gaffer tape in the style of Columbo? Don't get me wrong, Eastwood is a damn fine actor and director but the lead role in this one should have gone to someone thirty years his junior. Still a good story told but in the end, nothing we haven't seen before.

Directed by and starring Clint Eastwood, I didn't know anything about what this film would involve, and I will be honest in saying that it was purely because of the leading star, and his good supporting cast, that I decided to watch. Basically Steve Everett (Clint Eastwood) is an alcoholic and womanising reporter and journalist for the Oakland Tribune, and he is covering the story of Frank Louis Beechum (Romeo Must Die's Isaiah Washington) who faces execution for murder. The verdict of whether he killed a pregnant woman who owed him $96 was guilty, and he will be put to death at midnight in a few days, and Steve, who is also feeling grief after the death of his wife in a car accident, has to see if the sentence is fair. As Steve covers the story closer, he unearths undiscovered evidence from the night in question, that may prove that Beechum is in fact guilty, but his boss Bob Findley (Denis Leary) doesn't want to listen to him, since he is a disruption, and he slept with his wife. It comes to the point when Steve finds the substantial evidence that proves Beechum is indeed innocent, because of missed witnesses or something, and he races to stop the execution as it is about to happen, and in the end thankfully he stopped it just in time. Also starring Lisa Gay Hamilton as Bonnie Beechum, James Woods as Alan Mann, Bernard Hill as Warden Luther Plunkitt, Diane Venora as Barbara Everett, Michael McKean as Reverend Shillerman, Michael Jeter as Dale Porterhouse and K-PAX's Mary McCormack as Michelle Ziegler. Eastwood directs reasonably well, but his screen presence as the grizzled but determined investigator is a good performance, and the other good names in the cast get just about enough time to show their talent too, it is a simple of story of reporter trying to prove a man he is writing about innocent, but it is a near enough satisfactory crime thriller. Worth watching!

TRUE CRIME has the potential to be a powerful thought experiment, exploring the psychology behind the perception of what True Crime truly is. Aside from implicit racism, no real issues are broached in this dialog-driven Clint Eastwood actioner. From an Andrew Klaven novel, TRUE CRIME is merely the tale of a wrongly-convicted murderer on death row, Frank Beechum (played stolidly by Isaiah Washington) and curmudgeon reporter, Steve Everett's (Eastwood) 11th-hour hunt for the truth to grant his stay of execution.The question of what criteria constitutes True Crime is never raised. The plot involves a young black man robbing a grocery store and accidentally killing the pregnant female clerk, while Beechum happens to be in the store. Beechum is convicted for the crime on the tried-and-true Whitey charge of "Being Black And Nearby." To really bite at the meat of the movie's title, we would be exploring who is more of a criminal: the robber-murderer, or the congressperson whose mismanagement of social policy created the necessity for the robber to turn to crime for survival in the first place.In other words, is the bottom rung of society to blame for their survival instincts, when those instincts are only brought into prominence because white-collar criminals create a disparity of wealth in society to begin with? Well, slap a little racism in there - keep the deep thinkers at bay. For a second.There are a few too-convenient plot points and pulp coincidences, and we shudder to think how a less talented director might have made a mush of them. Only Eastwood directing Eastwood can get away with contrivances like Everett knowing the governor personally and later calling in a favor in the dead of night when the clock is ticking down; only Eastwood directing Eastwood can make sexagenarian Everett a convincing skirt-chaser, involved with a fellow reporter's (Denis Leary) wife. Only Eastwood directing Eastwood, Etc.For the simple story it is, TRUE CRIME hits its marks and pays off: dialog is snappy, especially the uber-masculine repartee between Eastwood, James Woods (as his editor) and Denis Leary; the principals give nuanced performances - Lisa Gay Hamilton as Washington's loyal wife, Diane Verona as Everett's estranged wife, Michael Jeter as a slimy eyewitness; Bernard Hill as a sympathetic warden and Michael McKean as a boneheaded priest. Eastwood's real-life daughter, Francesca Fisher-Eastwood (from ex-wife Frances Fisher), plays his cute little daughter.--Review by Poffy The Cucumber.