7.4 | / 10 |
Users | 4.8 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.2 |
This film tells the story of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, an African-American man who rose from a troubled youth to become a successful middleweight boxer. However, his life is shattered when he is accused of a triple murder, convicted and sentence to multiple life terms. Despite becoming a cause celebre and dogged efforts to prove his innocence through his autobiography, he remains imprisoned. Then, an African-American boy and his Canadian mentors read Carter's book and begin working for his exoneration.
Starring: Denzel Washington, Vicellous Shannon, Deborah Kara Unger, Liev Schreiber, John HannahSport | 100% |
Biography | 71% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
French: DTS 5.1
English SDH, French
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
UV digital copy
Mobile features
Slipcover in original pressing
Region free
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
When The Hurricane was released in 1999, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter had been free for fourteen years, but the controversy surrounding his trials, convictions and over twenty years of incarceration remained undiminished. Even though Norman Jewison's film opened with a prominent disclaimer acknowledging that some of the events had been fictionalized, partisans leapt up nationwide to denounce the film for . . . fictionalizing. Jewison's work was excoriated as an undeserved makeover of a career criminal who had been sprung on a "technicality"—an odd claim when the "technical" point was that Carter's trial was fundamentally defective, resulting in an invalid conviction. When those same detractors went on to assert that Carter had yet to be "exonerated", they were picking and choosing among technicalities, because a person who has never been properly convicted is not obliged to exonerate himself. There is little doubt, though, that the anti-Hurricane campaign was effective in limiting the film's award prospects. It received only a single Oscar nomination for Denzel Washington's performance in the title role. And it is entirely possible that Washington's loss on Oscar night (to Kevin Spacey for American Beauty) was due in some measure to the negative campaign against the film. (Washington's victory two years later for Training Day had the kind of "makeup" element for which the Oscars have long been noted.) The controversy over Carter and his case has been revived by the release of The Hurricane on Blu-ray, as a glance at the IMDb forums will confirm. While the 1966 Lafayette Bar murders for which Carter was sent to prison lack the mythic dimension and historical significance that have made "the grassy knoll" and "the Zapruder film" into familiar catchphrases, the details are just as difficult to disentangle, with a melange of conflicting theories, testimony, unreliable witnesses, recantations, recantations of recantations, inept forensics, questionable prosecutorial decisions, a conspicuous lack of motive and, yes, Carter's previous criminal record, which he has never tried to conceal. Indeed, one of the major themes of both the film and Carter's autobiography, The Sixteenth Round, on which the film is partly based, is the former middleweight boxer's long battle against his toughest adversary: himself.
Throughout his commentary, director Jewison praises the work of cinematographer Roger Deakins (Skyfall and numerous films with the Coen Bros.) for his inventive lighting and camera moves that allowed Jewison to film so many scenes in the confined spaces of prison cells without becoming visually repetitive. Universal's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is another good catalog effort, faithfully reproducing the many deep shadows and varied palette of Deakins' careful work. Black levels and details are consistently excellent. The subtle shifts in lighting and color temperature that accompany changes in time and place are carefully replicated (and they are essential to a film that jumps around as much as The Hurricane). The present-day scenes in prison, court, lawyers' offices and the streets of New Jersey favor cooler, bleaker tones, while the historical scenes of Carter's past, and the Canadian scenes of Lesra's present, are warmer and richer. The exceptions, of course, are the black-and-white boxing sequences and the heavily shaded night scenes that recreate the Lafayette Bar murders and their aftermath. If there is a criticism to be made of this presentation, it's that the film appears to have been slightly degrained, consistent with Universal's usual approach, and a touch of artificial sharpening can be observed, if one looks closely. However, the degraining does not appear to have come at the sacrifice of detail, and the sharpening has not created any noticeable edge halos or ringing. The average bitrate is a healthy 32 Mbps (technically, 31.995). No compression issues appeared.
The film's original 5.1 mix is reproduced in lossless DTS-HD MA, and it fully captures the nuances of the sophisticated sound editing that whisks the viewer from one setting to another, e.g., back and forth between the roar of the crowd at the Hurricane/Griffith match and the clattering of boots on prison stairs in the opening montage. The subjective experience of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter battling his demons is conveyed with a sound montage of overlapping speeches spread across the front soundstage. (On the commentary track, Jewison describes how he himself would read one version during a take to give Denzel Washington something to play against.) The sounds of prison life (clanging doors, distant voices, klaxon alerts) play in the background. The haunting, foreboding score by Christopher Young (Copycat, Drag Me to Hell ) contributes a tone to the film that alternates between solemn and suspenseful.
The extras have been ported over from Universal's 2003 DVD of The Hurricane, minus only the production notes and the DVD-ROM features.
No person can be fully summed up in a two-and-a-half-hour film, but anyone who insists that The Hurricane turns Rubin "Hurricane" Carter into a saint either hasn't watched the film or has wilfully ignored large portions of it. Whatever one may think of Carter, it is beyond dispute that he spent over two decades in prison as the result of defective trials, because that was the conclusion of the legal system itself. The words spoken by Judge Sarokin in the film are a tiny excerpt of the lengthy, thoroughly researched and minutely reasoned opinion that he issued in granting Carter his freedom. As someone who worked for the federal courts (in a neighboring jurisdiction) during the period when Sarokin heard Carter's case, I am familiar with the sheer volume of habeas corpus petitions that pass through those courts and how quickly most are dispatched for lack of merit. A criminal conviction has to suffer from major deficiencies to be set aside on such a petition, and since district judges hate being reversed, they won't stick their necks out unless they are sure they can support the decision. Judge Sarokin was unanimously affirmed on appeal, and the State of New Jersey finally gave up trying to send The Hurricane back to prison. If you read the opinions, it's clear the State had no case. Highly recommended.
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