A TRUE CRIME
United Artists and Sony Pictures deserve time for their movie 'Capote'
BY LAUREN ALLEN

Thinking about the movie Capote? Here's a better thought - save yourself $10. All of the folks giving this movie an A+ must have some sort of financial interest in its success. Even Philip Seymour Hoffman's brilliant portrayal of author Truman Capote isn't enough to save this ship from sinking. I was shocked when I read that the picture only lasted 98 minutes. By the time it finally ended, it felt like I had been trapped in the theater for three or more hours. 

The story, based on true events, begins in 1959 with New Yorker magazine writer Truman Capote reading a report in the New York Times of the shocking and brutal murder of a family of four in their rural Kansas farmhouse. Capote is so intrigued by the story that he decides to go to Kansas to write about it himself. 

Sounds like a great start to a great movie, right? Well, in no time at all, the film takes a downward turn and, unfortunately, takes its sweet time in arriving at the bottom. 

Capote somehow convinces the local authorities to give him unhindered access to the two men accused of these killings and goes on to spend a seemingly endless amount of time with them. He soon decides that a mere article about this event just won't do and that he must write a book about it. The two men are eventually found guilty and sentenced to death. For whatever reason, Capote feels like these two are either somehow innocent of the crime for which they've been convicted, or are just totally being mis-understood by society. He then decides it's up to him to find them a decent lawyer and do whatever he can to save these two animals from the fate that they've been sentenced. 

Thanks to Capote's help, what in 1959 would have most likely been a quick deliverance of justice now drags out for more than four years. At some point during these four years, it seems as if Capote has either fallen in love with one of the two prisoners or he's so tortured by the fact that there still has been no final resolution to this case that he becomes an almost non-functioning alcoholic and can't finish the book.

I don't want to give away the ending, but as we all know, Capote eventually finishes the classic book, In Cold Blood, which becomes the last book the author ever completes before his death in 1984. 

What I find so sad about this film is that it had the potential to be great. As bored as I was, I could see how the facts of the story were so interesting, that my friend and I ran to Barnes and Noble the same day to buy a copy of In Cold Blood. I don't begrudge Hoffman the Academy nod for best actor in the least. However, the movie itself is so painfully slow and drawn out and that it becomes as brutal to the viewer as the crimes were to the victims. The movie itself can be summed up in one word: pointless.

If you're dying to see Philip Seymour Hoffman in action, go and rent Along Came Polly. It's not much better than Capote, but you'll be much more comfortable falling asleep on your own sofa. LW