The Hurricane [HD]

flawed but powerful drama
The most startling revelation about Norman Jewison's film `The Hurricane' is that this true-life account of middleweight champion Ruben `Hurricane' Carter turns out to be more about the glories of writing than of boxing. In fact, almost no time at all in the film is dedicated to chronicling the details of Carter's fighting career but rather to the attempts made by him and others on his behalf to prove his innocence in a murder case that resulted in his serving a nearly 20-year long prison sentence.

The sympathies of the filmmakers clearly lie with Carter, although a number of people have, since the release of the film, challenged some of the film's reliability and veracity. As one completely unacquainted with the facts of the case as they initially played themselves out, I am certainly in no position to adjudge the authenticity and accuracy of the film. As a piece of drama, however, `The Hurricane' generates an impressive amount of interest in the viewer and even attains...

Unbiased assessment of the Movie
I actually give this movie two separate ratings. First, solely as a cinematic and artistic story I give the movie a 4, maybe even a 4.5 but as some of the other reviews have pointed out, there are some very large historical inaccuracies. Here is my review on each:

Movie:

As a movie "The Hurricane" is excellent. Denzel Washington does a great job as do the other actors in this film. It is definitely a tear jerker and helps portray racism which WAS very prevalent during the civil rights movement era. The movie is entertaining and enjoyable, the problem lies with the claim that it is a "true story." The best part of the movie is that it exposes horrible corruption,but when that corruption is possibly false, the movie loses credibility. If it had a different title and was described simply as a story, none of these issues would exist.

The Facts:

I am not a lawyer, or a judge, or anything that has to do with crime. I am an officer in the US Army...

NO NO NO NO NO!!
This film is WRONG WRONG WRONG... the glorification of this man should not be allowed to continue unabated. The historical "inacuracies" are not limited to just the "compression of a few characters" or the "cutting of a few corners". It instead attempts to convince an increasingly gullible film going public that a twice convicted triple murderer was an honourable and gentle, scholarly "buddha".
This is not a mere distortion of the truth to make the story more watchable but a complete misrepresentation of the truth in every single part of the film.

The Bob Dylan song in the film (which incidentally, rather tellingly, he has not performed since carters second conviction in 1976, shortly after he beat the hell out of the woman who led the campaign for his release) is as much of a work of utter fiction, but was inspired and written in a time when the civil rights movement in America was at its most fiery.

There is however NO excuse for...

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