Free at Last
FILM: The Hurricane
DIRECTOR: Norman Jewison
STARRING: Denzel Washington, Liev Schreiber
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BOXER RUBIN CARTER (DENZEL WASHINGTON) FIGHTS TO PROVE HIS INNOCENCE IN NORMAN
JEWISON'S LATEST, THE HURRICANE.
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Denzel Washington won a best actor Golden Globe last week for his lead
performance in Norman Jewison's The Hurricane. Rumors are widespread that he'll
soon be nominated for an Oscar in the same category. And these honors are
richly deserved. Nobody else portrays dignity and quiet strength with such
understated power. Unfortunately, Jewison's film does not rise to the level of
its star.
Written by Armyan Bernstein and Dan Gordon, The Hurricane is the
story of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, a black New Jersey boxer who was poised to
become a world middleweight champion in the mid-1960s when he was accused of
killing three people in a bar shooting. The prosecution assembled very little
evidence, all of it circumstantial. No motive was ever established. Yet, in a
racially charged trial during racially charged times, Carter was convicted by
an all-white jury and served nearly 20 years before he was finally
exonerated.
This compelling story has been stripped of nearly all its nuance.
Instead of examining the intricacies of a racist system, Jewison blames a
single racist police detective. Meanwhile, though the film tries to wring tears
out of Carter's relationship with a teenage boy who admires him, their
connection is never made adequately clear. Worse, the picture introduces three
Canadian do-gooders (Deborah Kara Unger, Liev Schreiber and John Hannah) and
credits them with setting Carter free. The true story was far more complicated,
and I can only presume that the Canadians who helped were normal, complicated,
red-blooded human beings, not the smiling cardboard cutouts we meet here. Last,
most important and most troubling, Carter himself is treated as an emblem, not
a human being. The real Carter arrived at the crossroads of his life with a lot
of baggage. His story is one of inspirational transcendence and redemption.
Here, his story is reduced to that of his victimization. He was a victim, but
the might of his story lies in how he triumphed over not just his victimization
but also over himself.
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