"The Hurricane" (1999) - Movie Review

You go in a book shop and start to read a book which attracts you. Skipping pages in tens and twenties and finally at the end of it, you read the final thirty pages consecutively which leaves contented for reading a whole book in an unwholesome manner. Seeing Norman Jewinson directed “The Hurricane” is a similar feeling and there are certain powerful pages and the final act is considerably emotional but it is a pass of those and not a wholesome script.

The film discloses that even though it is based on true story of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, it has fictionalized material. Filming a true story has an obligation and an exception. The obligation of not twisting and bending a blatant truth more for the appeal of completion or angelic portrayal of the person and the exception of acid testing the veracity to its highest level. In this tiny region of walk, it is a tough dance to do. It connects the past with the present through the book “The Sixteenth Round” by Rubin “Hurricane” Carter (Denzel Washingon) ending up in the hands of a boy Lesra (Vicellous Reon Shannon) in Toronto, Canada. He has been helped by the three wondrous people Lisa (Deborah Kara Unger), Terry (John Hannah) and Sam (Live Schreiber).

The story from Carter’s child hood is read through the narration of Carter to Lesra and the remaining three as well. Lesra being suffered the tough child hood as Carter identifies the injustice and ordeal went by the man. The book summarizes certain instances of Carter’s life and the process of him being pinned down for murders by a cop named Della Pesca (Dan Hedaya). Whether one existed in that name and whether he continuously slammed down Carter with corruption and pure hatred is a question. After seeing the film, I went and read the chronicles of the events in Wiki and lot of details have been missed out, omitted and skewed. But while seeing the film, I assumed its fictionalization and went along with it. The film’s problem is more than the verisimilitude nature of it.

The actor playing Lesra is not convincing. He is noticeably overjoyed incoherently. But the material plays a part in it. After he reads the book, he writes to Carter, one of the important letters for both Carter and Lesra and the film ignores the complete narration of it. That clouds the reaction of Carter when instantly replying with another letter which again does not carry the emotions. While debilitating it to a melodramatic staged communication would be crude, the true events and the film depend on that relationship, which marks the origin of the third fight for the man.

Similarly, when Carter is sentenced to prison, he is put in solitary confinement by Warden (Al Waxman) for refusing to wear the prison uniform. That is a high point in the film of one man’s fight with himself in constantly questioning, punishing his decision to stand against the authority. His ego is presented in shadows of darkness by Washington. He comes out and meets with Lieutenant Jimmy (Clancy Brown) who shows a welcome kindness to Carter. Their relationship thus forms out of thin air and they become good buddies (And is Clancy Brown redeeming Captain Hadley from “The Shawshank Redemption” through Jimmy? It was strange to see Brown who forever has inscribed as this dangerous Hadley into a much amicable Jimmy in my mind. Weird how much of a good performance can typecast one actor).

To expect a lucid film of exact recreation of the true events is ridiculous but concealing a man’s flaw seems unreasonable. Rubin “Hurricane” Carter had a life spend mostly in jail. Empathy of understanding that is an insult to him but the greatness of the character is the reality of his existence which is a combination of dark and bright tones of him. What did he feel about his prejudice? What did he feel about his previous arrests? What did he feel the hatred he grew upon the people who did injustice to him? Essentially in omitting those crucial feelings, the man in “The Hurricane” becomes a ghostly hero.