Two stars. Rated R, for profanity and disturbing content
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.17.15
Bad movies are irritating for all
sorts of reasons. Many, easy to dismiss as talentless garbage, aren’t worth
fretting about.
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| Who's playing whom? That's the question at the core of this yawningly dull drama, as disgraced journalist Mike Finkel (Jonah Hill, left) attempts to get truthful answers during a series of intimate interviews with accused killer Christian Longo (James Franco). |
I get seriously annoyed, though,
with the ones that show promise — particularly those with an intriguing
premise, and an approach that hints at clever psychological complexity — and
then fail to deliver. Utterly.
Those are infuriating, generating
a level of hostility that sends viewers grumbling from the theater, wishing it
were possible to reclaim those two
hours of their lives.
True Story is just such a film.
At first blush, for viewers who
approach it cold, the early scenes of director Rupert Goold’s big-screen debut
evoke pleasant memories of 1996’s Primal
Fear, with its twisty battle of wits between hotshot attorney Richard Gere
and the altar boy (Edward Norton) accused to killing a respected Catholic
priest.
But True Story isn’t fiction; Goold and co-scripter David Kajganich
have based their film on the bizarre events actually experienced by disgraced
New York Times journalist Michael Finkel, as recorded in his 2005 book, True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa.
That shifts this big-screen adaptation into entirely different territory ...
although, in the final analysis, the distinction is moot.
It would have been unsatisfying
as a fictitious drama, and it’s equally tedious as a wannabe historical record.
I walked away with two strong
impressions: 1) Finkel still wants
absolution for past sins, and this film ain’t gonna bring him that satisfaction
— frankly, nothing should — and 2) stars James Franco and Jonah Hill appear to
have viewed this project as a means to establish some “serious actor” cred.
They’re doomed to equal disappointment.
This movie’s a stiff: deadly
dull, clumsily executed and ultimately maddening. The storyline sets up
numerous issues that demand answers, none of them forthcoming. Setting aside
any attempt by Goold to achieve artistic ambiguity, the reason for failure is
obvious: We’re dealing with two liars. Once this becomes obvious, as the film
concludes, we can’t help feeling conned.
Granted, one character may be a
pathological liar, as opposed to the one who’s perhaps only an accidental liar
— and I stress the “perhaps” — but the result is the same. We’re left in the
hands of unreliable narrators: the death of engaging drama.
