In 1966 Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, and John Artis were arrested for a triple homicide. Years later, after divorcing his wife – allowing her to move on, he wrote a book while incarcerated.
In 1980 Lesra Martin, a young black man from Queens, NY who was taken in by three Canadian educators – finds his book and is enamored by its content. Wanting to meet Carter, he writes to him, and the pair bond. Soon Martin starts to doubt that Carter is guilty, and along with his guardians investigate further in order to prove his innocence.
Direction
Directed by Norman Jewison in one of his final projects. With great use of colours. Occasionally I did not buy the ‘era’ especially those set in the early 1980’s. Some of the 1960’s era setting felt oddly done too. However this is a non complaint, merely an observation.
Cast/Characters
Denzel Washington plays Carter, who over a 20+ year timeline is shown to go from up and comer boxer, to champ, to incarcerated and eventually freed. His performance is flawless, and I don’t think there is any other actor who could have transformed themselves into all the different “eras” of his life.
Vicellous Reon Shannon plays Lesra “Les” Martin, the young man who contacts Carter. The power behind his performance, due to his heritage connection with Carter has many moments of brilliance.
Liev Schrieber, Debra Kara Unger and John Hannah play Sam, Lisa and Terry, the Canadians that Les lived with for the time.
Dan Hedaya plays essentially the only real “human antagonist” Della Pesca – who has been trying to bring Carter down since his youth.
Clancy Brown plays (another) Prison guard, and friend of Carter’s while his is in jail… a significantly different role to the one he played in Shawshank Redemption.
Rod Steiger has a wonderful arc near the end of the film as the federal judge who Carter’s case is tried in front of, and David Paymer and Harris Yulin play his lawyers.
Breakdown
Coming from my favourite year in cinema (1999) this sits high in the list of top tier.
The non linear narrative is relatively easy to follow, especially as many of the scenes that swap from year to year give us the year on the screen.
Rubin’s history is quite tragic, as he seemingly was never really given a chance. The antagonism shown by Della Pesca is reportedly fictional (however Della Pesca was based on a real life police officer Vincent DeSimone).
His back and forth from prison to freedom (after being in the army, and then after being accused of murder) makes you sympathise with the man.
Lesra’s first letter to Carter, which finally has the two men meet at the one hour mark – and Carter’s back – have some truly heartwarming and pack an emotional punch.
Carter is initially wary of letting someone in close to him, especially as he had basically given up the fight for freedom, given up on his marriage (in order to let his wife move on), and wary of ‘white’ people who Lesra lives with.
It is a powerful story of racial profiling (Carter was imprisoned because he was black), and Carter is distrustful of white people for the way he had been treated in the past. His ideology is restored by Lesra, the Canadians and even a beautiful story one of his fellow black cellmates tell about ‘white people’.
From there, the story mostly stays in “present” timeline – with the Canadians joining Lesra in trying to investigate the truth in Carter’s false imprisonment.
For once I didn’t dislike the narration, as it came as the (one can assume) the actual words from the actual book by the actual Rubin Carter.
Bob Dylan’s 1976 song Hurricane gained additional popularity following the release of this movie.
If I could pick on anything, I would have liked to have more inclusion of John Artis, who by dumb luck was in the car that was pulled over on the night of the murders. Considering their real life bond over the events, more of him should have been included.
Overall
Despite my small flaws (era ‘feel’ and lack of John Artis), this is a strong contender for one of the best films of 1999. A must watch, and one of Washington’s best films I’ve reviewed.
4.5/5
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