Rating: 
Summary: Well done, entertaining movie
Review: A solid, entertaining movie that was marketed as a thriller, but in truth it's a riveting, character-driven drama. Unlike most other superstars, Clint has never fallen into the trap of simplying repeating himself over and over (though I suspect there are many who wish he would.) I thought his role was great and very convincing -- if people don't think an older man can be a womanizer, think again. It's going on all the time, including to the real life Clint, who's wife is quite young and exceptionally beautiful. All in all, Clint is an exceptional director, who always gets great performances from his actors, and this is no exception. His pacing is always meticulous, outside of the typical Hollywood thriller, reminiscent of older times when story and character was more important than special effects (and CGI) and also of European movies. This movie doesn't rank up there with his best, like Play Misty for Me, High Plains Drifter, Unforgiven, Bird, A Perfect World, etc, but still very good. Well worth watching -- a few times!
Rating:
Summary: Eastwood Is The Man
Review: Another great Eastwood directed film with terrific performances by everyone in the cast especially (i.e. Isaiah Washington, Lisa Gay Hamilton and James Woods). Eastwood is one of my favorite directors ever. If you are in any way familiar with an old radio show called "Nightbeat" this film is very similiar. This one has a very suspenseful ending.
Rating:
Summary: Eastwood Is The Man
Review: Another great Eastwood directed film with terrific performances by everyone in the cast especially (i.e. Isaiah Washington, Lisa Gay Hamilton and James Woods). Eastwood is one of my favorite directors ever. If you are in any way familiar with an old radio show called "Nightbeat" this film is very similiar. This one has a very suspenseful ending.
Rating: 
Summary: True Crime, wasting 2 hours of my time.
Review: As a long term clint Eastwood fan, I found this movie to be a big disappointment. Eastwood's direction is poor, the excitment that should have been present in the story was not there. I found his acting much better than his directing. I did enjoy some of the other performances, especially James Woods. The movie is worth renting but I would not buy it.
Rating:
Summary: CLOCKWORK OAKLAND
Review: At least two scenes of TRUE CRIME should stay in my memory for a very long time : the visit at the zoo with Clint Eastwood shouting "Speed Zoo" and "We're going fast" while pushing his daughter on wheels and the scene involving Clint and James Woods for a conversation about women, ethics and capital punishment : two great actors for a moment of pure pleasure. At first, TRUE CRIME could be considered as another movie about capital punishment. Well filmed, with a good rythm and convincing actors, this movie is the perfect movie to rent. But take a second look at TRUE CRIME and you won't be disappointed. This movie can be seen one, two or three times, it will still unveil a lot of goodies. One can admire how Clint Eastwood compares with subtlety the destiny of Steve Everett and Frank Beechum by using descriptions of similar situations : for example, the two little girls harassing their fathers with multiple demands at a crucial moment. Let's also observe how Clint uses a clever editing to pass from Beechum's cell to Clint's scenes : cigarettes, paintings (the green pastures) for instance are themes that bind the two destinies. I strongly recommend this film which is another masterpiece in the exceptional directorial career of Clint Eastwood. Sound and images perfect for me with above-averages extra-features. A DVD for your library. At least, I hope so !
Rating:
Summary: CLOCKWORK OAKLAND
Review: At least two scenes of TRUE CRIME should stay in my memory for a very long time : the visit at the zoo with Clint Eastwood shouting "Speed Zoo" and "We're going fast" while pushing his daughter on wheels and the scene involving Clint and James Woods for a conversation about women, ethics and capital punishment : two great actors for a moment of pure pleasure. At first, TRUE CRIME could be considered as another movie about capital punishment. Well filmed, with a good rythm and convincing actors, this movie is the perfect movie to rent. But take a second look at TRUE CRIME and you won't be disappointed. This movie can be seen one, two or three times, it will still unveil a lot of goodies. One can admire how Clint Eastwood compares with subtlety the destiny of Steve Everett and Frank Beechum by using descriptions of similar situations : for example, the two little girls harassing their fathers with multiple demands at a crucial moment. Let's also observe how Clint uses a clever editing to pass from Beechum's cell to Clint's scenes : cigarettes, paintings (the green pastures) for instance are themes that bind the two destinies. I strongly recommend this film which is another masterpiece in the exceptional directorial career of Clint Eastwood. Sound and images perfect for me with above-averages extra-features. A DVD for your library. At least, I hope so !
Rating: 
Summary: Decent Clint Eastwood drama
Review: Clint Eastwood has been a star for thirty-five years. He is also a good composer and a respected director. In 1993, he won the Oscar for Best Director for Unforgiven, which also won Best Picture. Now nearly seventy, his movies since then have reflected a more reflective, but still sure, pacing and tone. True Crime, then, is not the action-adventure picture it was merchandised as. Eastwood plays Steve Everett, a hard-living, womanizing reporter. He used to have a great career in New York City, but he blew it. Now he works for The Oakland Tribune in California, where his job, like the rest of his life, is perilously close to coming apart. Steve is a brilliant and complex character, and Eastwood gives a fine performance. Steve is a sort of Everyman of modern American society. He has lived his life without much continuity, and his relationships have been the shallow sort typical of our times. Now his one gift, which he calls following his hunches, is beginning to fail him. His lifestyle leaves him with no one to save him. One day another reporter is in an auto accident, and Steve is assigned to take over the story of an execution, which is to take place that night. The editor wants an interview with the condemned man for a human interest story. Steve, though, is of the old school and is always looking for a news story. After some research, his hunch is that his subject is probably innocent of the crime. Of course, there is little time for Steve to prove his theory, and this is what gives True Crimes its tension. The condemned is Frank Beecham [Isiah Washington], who has always claimed he did not kill a college coed over a $96 debt six years before. Almost half the movie takes place inside the prison, where we see Frank's grim last hours, which include a heart-wrenching visit from his wife and young daughter. There is a parallel here because Steve is estranged -- or nearly so -- from his wife. They also have a young daughter. We see that both characters are basically good, but got into their present predicaments through past behavior. Just as no one believes Frank is innocent, Steve's wife and coworkers do not believe him when he says he can change. There are elements in True Crime which do not ring true, although they do not ruin the movie. They make it good rather than great. Eastwood's career has been primarily built on characters who are manly loners. Handsome though he is, he's rarely been believable as a romantic lead. Age has not been as kind to him as it has to Sean Connery and Harrison Ford, and the easy with which many women fall for him in the film is hard to swallow. Also, there is a wild chase scene at the end of the picture, which is at odds with the tempo of the overall effort. It's almost as if Eastwood felt obligated to revert to his former image for the sake of his fans. On the whole, True Crime is interesting and thought-provoking. With its sultry jazz score and its emphasis on characters, it makes for decent, but not riviting, entertainment.
Rating:
Summary: Eastwood's Crime: Unforgivable
Review: Clint Eastwood made a mistake, and that mistake was "True Crime." Produced by, directed by, and starring Eastwood, this movie was so bad that I walked out thinking I must have missed something. Could the distinguished Clint Eastwood have really made a movie that awful? The answer, sadly, is yes. Based on a novel by Andrew Klavan, this film is predicable and overflowing with clichés. While the plot seems promising at first, this would-be thriller ends up as suspenseful as a bubble bath. Steve Everett (Eastwood) is a recovering alcoholic, womanizing, down-and-out reporter who was fired from his prestigious position in New York City and is now a metro reporter for the Oakland Tribune. He is assigned a human interest story on Frank Beachum (Isaiah Washington), a black Death Row inmate scheduled to be killed by lethal injection that day for allegedly murdering a pregnant convenient store worker over $96 and a bottle of steak sauce. Of course, Steve has a hunch that Frank is innocent and has less than 12 hours to prove it and save his life. Sounds good, right? Unfortunately, this plot summary glosses over the movie's many problems. First off, the plot is so contrived that I found myself laughing aloud (and I wasn't alone) at the ridiculous coincidences that allow Steve to solve this six-year-old mystery within a few hours. The embarrassingly obvious script is painful to listen to, and the paint-by-number characters exhibit no depth or development. Each one is a cartoon-like stereotype of some kind of person, embodying only one trait and pursuing it to the most agonizing extreme. The scenes with Frank and his wife (Lisa Gay Hamilton) and daughter are patronizing, if not humorous. Eastwood is tragically miscast. He needs to realize he's almost 70 and his Dirty Harry/ladies' man act is no longer effective. In an uncomfortable sex scene, we watch as a woman half his age runs her fingers along his wrinkled torso. Squirming and embarrassed, I turned away from the image of a man who has about as much sex appeal as my grandfather. Glaring, grumbling, and squinting, Eastwood utters each of his lines as if they contain some profound meaning ... but they simply don't. Eastwood's laid-back, jazzy style is all wrong for what should be a nail-biting, edge-of-your-seat race against time, and his leisurely, languid pace fails miserably, resulting in a disjointed and annoying film. The exceedingly clumsy script keeps the audience ten minutes ahead of the characters. With its molasses-like pacing peppered with inappropriate comic relief, one has to wonder what Eastwood was thinking; he should have known better. It is difficult to believe that the man who had a hand in such great movies as "Unforgiven" and "The Outlaw Josey Wales" could have had anything to do with this unfocused and directionless flop. I do have two good words to say for this movie, and those two words are "James Wood." His remarkable performance as Steve's politically incorrect chief editor feels as if it was wrenched out of a different and much better movie. His few scenes with Eastwood consist of pure cleverness as the two men exchange lightening quick, sarcastic witticisms. However, this one oasis of entertainment in a 127-minute desert devoid of any other drop of amusement does not change the fact that the true crime about this movie would be wasting your money to buy it.
Rating:
Summary: A Race Against Time
Review: Clint Eastwood plays reporter Steve Everett,who puts his job on the line and his family on hold to prove the innocence of an unjustly condemned man. He was given the story as a human interest piece,a story that was to depict the last few hours in the life of Frank Beechum(Isaiah Washington).He is at odds with his editor and is warned not to turn the story into a "Dick Tracey investigation". Steve is alot of things. He's an alcoholic(on the wagon),a womanizer, and lacks in the qualities needed to be a good father and husband to his family. But one thing he does have, is his reporter's instinct. He has "his nose" for the truth. He senses something fishy about the case which has already gone through numerous appeals,and with only hours to the execution, starts digging around, and takes us on a thrilling ride as he tries, up to the very last second, to save Frank from the death penalty. There is another storyline that runs parallel to the main focus of the film. The two families each going through their own personal anguishes. Frank's family, his wife and little girl, going through the agonizing last few hours with him, and Steve's wife and child must deal with his indiscretions and inattention to his own daughter.The wives played by Lisa Gay Hamilton and Diane Venora are expert at showing us the emotional states they are in. The little girls played by Penny Bae Bridges and Francesca Fisher-Eastwood(his real life daughter) are also terrific at making emotional demands on their Daddies at a time of crisis. Eastwood's expertise behind the camera, as well as his powerful on screen presence combined with a terrific cast and crew to bring us a thrilling and moving story.Many wonderful performances add to it. James Woods, Dennis Leary and Bernard Hill to start with. Frances Fisher(the film is a bit of a family affair)plays the D.A., Michael Jeeter and Michael Mckean also give fine performances, and to my delight Christine Ebersole makes an appearance as well as the legendary William Windom(check behind the bar for him).Music by Lennie Niehaus and photography by Jack Green are the icing on the cake. The DVD(WB) looks and sound great.It is presented in the original theatrical widescreen(matted), the picture is perfect and distingishable even in the darker scenes.Colors are pleasing and vibrant, and the sound excellent in the Dolby5.1 Surround.
There are a number of Special Features, including Behind The scenes Documentaries, a video by Diana Krall, and a compelling story told by a real reporter of a real life experience similar to the story(although this film was not based on that).See tech info for complete list of extras. This is Clint's 21st film as a director. He has a way of reaching an audience that touches the humanness in us that only gets better with each film...enjoy...Laurie
Rating: 
Summary: Don't bother
Review: Clint Eastwood proves that he's a legend in his own mind with this predicatble, BORING and slightly sickening tale. One- do you know how many people are actually pardoned as they are being executed? What a stupid premise. The entire movie is based on Clint finding clues to a long ago murder that others have missed. Ok, I know the police aren't perfect, but come on. I also found the scene where he's wrapped in a towel gross. I LOVE watching old Clint Eastwood movies. The guy was definitely a fox, but when he made this movie he was as old as my grandfather AND HE LOOKED LIKE HIM!!! I have no problem with aging actors, heck, Clint may have been ok if he hadn't tried so hard to be "sexy". Maybe the message was that this guy is totally past his prime, but I was so put off by this movie, the stupid premise, the aging star, that I did not like it. If you are a serious moviegoer, give this one a pass. The only redeemable part in the movie was James Woods- his horrible treatment of Clint's character was the only thing I found myself rooting for...
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