| Clint Eastwood
is back both in front of and behind the
camera in this dreadful adaptation of the
Andrew Klavan novel. In Crime, he
plays Steve Everett, a ballsy newspaper
reporter best known for taking down the
Mayor of New York City, but, because of
his penchant for bedding the wives and
daughters of his editors, finds himself
writing metro stories for the Oakland
Tribune. He’s also married, has
a young daughter and is a recovering
alcoholic. After one of his
colleagues is killed in a car crash,
Everett is assigned to write a
"human interest" sidebar on
Frank Beachum (Isaiah Washington, Out
of Sight), a man scheduled to be
killed by lethal injection for allegedly
shooting a pregnant convenience store
employee in the chest over $96 and a
bottle of steak sauce. After briefly
reviewing the facts (and I’m talking
about thirty-seconds-briefly), Everett
decides that they have the wrong guy and
immediately begins an investigation into
the incident. Of course, nobody believes
him and he only has twelve hours to right
the wrong made by our judicial system.
Unfortunately, these twelve hours seem
like they are filmed in
"real-time."
Unlike every
other film about wrongly accused
death-row inmates, Crime
doesn’t concentrate on the condemned
prisoner, but rather on Eastwood, who
plays a very unlikeable role. He grits
his teeth and utters each line like it
has some deep meaning, but they just
don’t. And Father Time hasn’t
been kind to Mr. Eastwood, either. He
looks like a ghoul. Ned Devine looked
more alive than Clint. And there was one
scene where they show a close-up of his
hand, which was as wrinkled and gnarly as
the root of a 500-year-old tree. Dirty
Harry? Not anymore. Incontinent Harry?
Probably so.
2:05 -  for
violence, adult language and situations
and brief nudity
|
