Everett's personal life is a mess. His wife, Barbara (Diane Venora) knew he cheated when she married him, but thought it was only with her. Now they have a young daughter, but Everett seems too busy to be a good dad (there's a scene where he pushes her stroller through the zoo at a dead run). Everett's also a little shaky; he was a drunk until two months ago, when he graduated to recovering alcoholic. He's assigned to write a routine story about the last hours of a man on Death Row: Frank Beachum (Isaiah Washington), convicted of the shooting death of a pregnant clerk in a convenience store.
Both the city editor and the editor-in-chief (James Woods) know Everett is a hotshot with a habit of turning routine stories into federal cases, and they warn him against trying to save Beachum at the 11th hour. But it's in Everett's blood to sniff out the story behind the story. He becomes convinced the wrong man is going to be executed. "When my nose tells me something stinks--I gotta have faith in it,'' he tells Beachum.
This is Eastwood's 21st film as a director and experience has given him patience. He knows that even in a deadline story like this, not all scenes have to have the same breakneck pace. He doesn't direct like a child of MTV, for whom every moment has to vibrate to the same beat. Eastwood knows about story arc, and as a jazz fan, he also knows about improvising a little before returning to the main theme.
"True Crime'' has a nice rhythm, intercutting the character's problems at home, his interviews with the prisoner, his lunch with a witness, his unsettling encounter with the grandmother of another witness. And then, as the midnight hour of execution draws closer, Eastwood tightens the noose of inexorably mounting tension. There are scenes involving an obnoxious prison chaplain and a basically gentle warden, and the mechanical details of execution. Cuts to the governor who can stay the execution. Tests of the telephone hotlines. Battles with Everett's editors. Last-minute revelations. Like a good pitcher, Eastwood gives the movie a nice slow curve and a fast break.
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