The Hurricane Reviewed

ROVIN' AND RAVIN' WITH MIKE

The Hurricane and The King and I

This week, Norman Jewison’s biopic, The Hurricane, roared into town with a great cast, some great ideas, and—alas—some great problems. Denzel Washington, last seen as a quadriplegic in The Bone Collector, now takes on the challenge of a very physical role, boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter.

I don’t know enough about the facts in the case to comment on the controversy about the accuracy of the film's account of Carter's life, and there are enough facts about the film itself to keep me occupied for a column or two. This was not the film I was expecting. With Bob Dylan’s rough, intense song about Carter (heard two or three times in the film) running through my head, I was expecting a similarly rough, intense film. Just about the only place one feels such rough intensity in the film itself is in the richly textured black-and-white fight scenes (suggestive of Raging Bull).

Then, there is Washington’s amazing performance—rough, intense, at times mystical, downright eerie in its—I’m going to say it—perfection. I wish the movie lived up to his performance. Jewison is an old-time liberal (my kind of guy), and this is an old-time, feel-good liberal movie—the kind that just feels so good, so comfortable, with its easy black and white (pardon me) division of good and bad, that it is destined to win more awards than it deserves. The road to dreadful movies is paved with good intentions.

For a film about a black man who spent some twenty years in prison for a murder that he did not commit, the film is very white. From age eleven, Carter is haunted by Vincent Della Pesca (Dan Hedaya), a policeman who seems to exist for no other reason than to bring misery to Carter. On the other hand, three squeaky clean, apparently sexless Canadians (Scotsman John Hannah, American Liev Schreiber, and only one Canadian, Deborah Unger—which may explain why they go a bit heavy on the eh) swoop down like angels who don’t have to work for a living.

Taking time out from home schooling Lesra, a bright young black Brooklynite (Vicellous Reon Shannon), they move to the United States to get Carter out of prison, something a parade of celebrities, and a couple of hard-working lawyers had not been able to do over the years. Sorry, but cheap sentiment is cheap sentiment, no matter in which emotional thrift shop it is purchased, and it suffocates any character development of the angels or the devils either. The only distinguishing characteristic of any of the three Canadians is that one (Unger) is a chain-smoker.

The film tells the stories of two young men. Lesra buys his first book, Carter’s autobiography, at a used book sale for twenty-five cents, and that is the point at which the two stories intersect. Unfortunately, Lesra’s story is reduced to an easy shorthand: poor, inner-city black kid. Carter’s story is reduced to a rapid summary in the worst kind of audio-visual telling. Except for a horrendous scene in which young Carter resists a pedophile, setting up his decades-long battle with Della Pesca, most of the story of Carter’s life before the murders is told, not shown, not fleshed out, not given any intensity.

Carter does not really come alive as a fully-rounded character, the script undermining Washington’s performance, until he meets Lesra. The anger, the disappointment, the lack of love, the unwillingness to accept love are rolled up tight as a new reel of celluloid in Washington’s tight, brilliant performance. There is an uneasy, uncertain give-and-take between Carter and Lesra as each not only discovers someone who can meet his needs but also discovers that he has needs. Washington shows the development of the warmth toward his spiritual son that supplants the cold fire of his determination not to let the system break him down, while Shannon does the best he can with the thankless task of clinging to the screen with Washington.

May the movie gods spare me from films full of noble thoughts, no matter how much I wish my readers’ hearts may be full of them—noble thoughts, not films. Go to see The Hurricane to see what acting that is more than acting can be. That is almost enough to justify seeing this film, but Denzel Washington’s work attains such greatness in spite of the film in which it is showcased.

A few weeks ago, discussing how I decide which films to review, I mentioned that I did not plan to see or review Anna and the King, that I could not imagine any reason for another film of the tired old story to be made. Well, I found a reason. Sometimes we need a film to which we can take an elderly aunt who hasn’t been to a movie in decades. Bless her dear heart, but she has a hearing impairment, so I hope that the lush visual beauty of the film might have cheered her up.

Unfortunately, this is another one-trick film, in this case, the acting of Chow Yin Fat, who brings an unexpected drollness and wit to the role of the king. I kept looking in his eyes for some hint that the king, who seemed, perhaps for the first time in any of the films of this story, more wise than passionate, saw through the feathers of the turkey he was trapped in. Poor Jodie Foster doesn’t stand a chance.

This week, I nod to old Henry James, of whom T.S. Eliot said he was an artist too pure to be corrupted by a thought. Keep your feet dry, your heart full of noble thoughts, and a bit of gratitude for the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., on whose holiday I am finishing this column.