# True Crime (1999)

### reviewed by
Jon Popick

PLANET SICK-BOY: http://www.sick-boy.com

Clint Eastwood is back both in front of and behind the camera in this dreadful adaptation of the Andrew Klavan novel. In Crime, he plays Steve Everett, a ballsy newspaper reporter best known for taking down the Mayor of New York City, but, because of his penchant for bedding the wives and daughters of his editors, finds himself writing metro stories for the Oakland Tribune. He's also married, has a young daughter and is a recovering alcoholic.

After one of his colleagues is killed in a car crash, Everett is assigned to write a `human interest' sidebar on Frank Beachum (Isaiah Washington, Out of Sight), a man scheduled to be killed by lethal injection for allegedly shooting a pregnant convenience store employee in the chest over $96 and a bottle of steak sauce. After briefly reviewing the facts (and I'm talking about thirty-seconds-briefly), Everett decides that they have the wrong guy and immediately begins an investigation into the incident. Of course, nobody believes him and he only has twelve hours to right the wrong made by our judicial system. Unfortunately, these twelve hours seem like they are filmed in `real-time.'

Unlike every other film about wrongly accused death-row inmates, Crime doesn't concentrate on the condemned prisoner, but rather on Eastwood, who plays a very unlikeable role. He grits his teeth and utters each line like it has some deep meaning, but they just don't. And Father Time hasn't been kind to Mr. Eastwood, either. He looks like a ghoul. Ned Devine looked more alive than Clint. And there was one scene where they show a close-up of his hand, which was as wrinkled and gnarly as the root of a 500-year-old tree. Dirty Harry? Not anymore. Incontinent Harry? Probably so. (R – 2:05 for violence, adult language and situations and brief nudity)

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