RESOURCES

True Crime

The movie True Crime was based on the book True Crime.

Which one did you like better, the movie or the book?  There are 5 votes for the book, and 5 votes for the movie.

Movie details for True Crime

The movie was released in 1999. True Crime was produced by Warner Home Video. More information on the movie is available on Amazon.com and also IMDb.

Actors on this movie include Isaiah Washington, Graham Beckel, Penny Bae Bridges, John Finn, Frances Fisher, Francesca Fisher-Eastwood, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Bernard Hill, Michael Jeter, Erik King, Denis Leary, Mary McCormack, Michael McKean, Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Marissa Ribisi, Laila Robins, Diane Venora, Hattie Winston and James Woods.

 

Read More About This Movie

Not enough people went to see True Crime in theaters. Wasn't Clint Eastwood too old to be playing a guy whom a variety of glorious women, from the middle-aged Diane Venora and Laila Robins to the young Mary McCormack and Lucy Liu, find attractive? Cou... Read More
Not enough people went to see True Crime in theaters. Wasn't Clint Eastwood too old to be playing a guy whom a variety of glorious women, from the middle-aged Diane Venora and Laila Robins to the young Mary McCormack and Lucy Liu, find attractive? Could the onetime Man with No Name credibly play a brilliant crime reporter, Steve Everett, with an ironic turn of phrase and an incurable habit of screwing up both his personal and professional lives? The respective answers to those questions are: hell no and hell yes. True Crime features one of Eastwood's best and most entertaining performances--and his work as director is utterly assured.

The story (from Andrew Klavan's bestselling novel) gives Everett the last-minute assignment of interviewing a condemned man (Isaiah Washington) on the eve of his execution. The prisoner, a born-again Christian and exemplary family man, has everything the reporter lacks except a shot at seeing the next sunrise. Everett sets out to get him that, yet far from making a beeline to the exculpatory evidence that will save the life of his "client," this very tarnished hero has to spend a lot of the next 24 hours contending with the baggage he's accumulated through drinking, wenching, and familial neglect. (A Pirandellian note: Everett's daughter is played by Eastwood's own daughter, Francesca Fisher-Eastwood, and her mother, Frances Fisher, returns for a feisty cameo as a prosecutor.)

This is a good one that got away. Don't let it happen again. -- Richard T. Jameson

Book details for True Crime

True Crime was written by Andrew Klavan. The book was published in 1995 by Dell. More information on the book is available on Amazon.com.

Andrew Klavan also wrote Don't Say a Word (1991).

 

Read More About This Book

True Crime is an edge-of-the-seat suspense novel that graphically portrays the final moments leading up to a condemned killer's appointment with the executioner. The plot is familiar but convincing: An inmate, Frank Beachum, denies any involvement in the ... Read More
True Crime is an edge-of-the-seat suspense novel that graphically portrays the final moments leading up to a condemned killer's appointment with the executioner. The plot is familiar but convincing: An inmate, Frank Beachum, denies any involvement in the murder of a young pregnant woman. His only chance for survival lies in the hands of a reporter, Steven Everett. From the very first page, however, veteran suspense writer Andrew Klavan does everything possible to make this journalist unlikable--he drinks too much, he's committed adultery. In fact, the incarcerated Beachum, who stands accused of a hideous crime, comes across as a much more decent person than Everett.

Foes of capital punishment will find in True Crime another buttress to the oft-expressed argument that state-sanctioned murder is not always just, that some police investigations are sloppy even when they're not politically tinged or racially motivated, and that exonerating evidence is often overlooked. Here such evidence is so glaringly overlooked that it's possible for a somewhat drunken reporter with plenty of other things on his mind (a wife who's about to leave him and a boss who's just discovered that Everett is cuckolding him) to spot the inconsistencies. He follows a hunch, discovers the identity of the real killer, and tries to clear Beachum's name as the minutes tick away. The relentless pace and Klavan's crisp, taut writing make the suspension of disbelief possible, and no doubt Clint Eastwood, who stars in the movie version, will make Steven Everett a more likely and likable hero. --Jane Adams