Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4170 in DVD
• Released on: 1999-11-01
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Arabic, Bulgarian, English, Romanian
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 122 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Not enough people went to see True Crime in cinemas. Wasn't Clint Eastwood too old to be playing a guy who a variety of glorious women, from the middle-aged Diane Venora and Laila Robins to the young Mary McCormack and Lucy Liu, find attractive? Could the onetime Man with No Name credibly play a brilliant crime reporter, Steve Everett, with an ironic turn of phrase and an incurable habit of screwing up both his personal and professional lives? The respective answers to those questions are: hell no and hell yes. True Crime features one of Eastwood's best and most entertaining performances--and his work as director is utterly assured.

The story (from Andrew Klavan's bestselling novel) gives Everett the last-minute assignment of interviewing a condemned man (Isaiah Washington) on the eve of his execution. The prisoner, a born-again Christian and exemplary family man, has everything the reporter lacks except a shot at seeing the next sunrise. Everett sets out to get him that, yet far from making a beeline to the exculpatory evidence that will save the life of his "client," this very tarnished hero has to spend a lot of the next 24 hours contending with the baggage he's accumulated through drinking, wenching and familial neglect. (A Pirandellian note: Everett's daughter is played by Eastwood's own daughter, Francesca Fisher-Eastwood, and her mother, Frances Fisher, returns for a feisty cameo as a prosecutor.) This is a good one that got away. Don't let it happen again. --Richard T Jameson

Special Features
1.85 Wide Screen
English
English
Region 2
Dolby Digital 5.1 English
Dolby Digital 5.1
The Scene Of The Crime
True Crime True Stories
Arabic\Bulgarian\English\Romanian

Synopsis
In TRUE CRIME, based on Andrew Klavan's novel, Clint Eastwood plays Steve Everett, a capable reporter who's nearly destroyed his career with alcohol and philandering. When he's assigned to do a human interest sidebar on Frank Beechum (Isaiah Washington), who's about to be executed for murder, Everett casually looks into the crime and quickly begins to see how shaky the evidence against Beechum is. As a director, Eastwood is a confident old hand here, and before he builds up the suspense (and don't worry, he will), he takes the time to delve deep into the lives of his characters and explore the sharp contrast between the cynical Everett, who neglects his family for his job, and the circumspect Beechum, whose greatest torment is not the proximity of his own death but the trauma he's causing his loving wife and daughter. Eastwood gives a wonderfully rich performance, and his rapport with James Woods and Denis Leary, as his newspaper bosses, gives the movie a welcome comic jolt. But the scenes of Beechum's family dealing with his fate are where the movie's overwhelming power lies. Eastwood and his screenwriters pull no punches, and it's difficult to bear witness to the painful, simple truth expressed in these scenes.

Customer Reviews

Incredible - the extras are better than the film.
Meet washed up reporter Steve Everett. He`s back on the wagon(just)and sleeping with his boss`s wife while neglecting his own and young daughter. The one thing stopping editor James Woods from firing Everett is his nose for a story - and that nose is telling him that death-sentenced murderer(Washington)is innocent. For a film that covers just 24 hours of a man`s life, the plot unravels at a maddenigly pedestrian pace. Key performances are superb(Leary restrained, Woods always reliable) and there are flashes of Clint`s old intensity, but this is sub-par from the former man with no name. The DVD meanwhile is a revelation, packed with two behined the scenes featurette that shed light on the Eastwood`s film-making process and a music video of the haunting torch song-esque theme `Why Should I Care?` True Crime is an average, beat the clock thriller, but the great extras are a gift at this low price.

Moral dilemma
A film dealing with one of life's great problems - death. Clint fills the part of a reporter perfectly, juggling a troubled personal life with a moral, very public issue. I'm sure this film will provide a moral dilemma for many years to come.

Surprisingle good film
I've always found Eastwood a little hit and miss, mostly because im not that into westerns or dirty harry. But i have to say this is a great film, great story, great characters and definately worth a prchase.