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The HurricaneRating:
Release Date: 11 July, 2000 Retail Price: $14.98 OUR Price: $14.98 You SAVE: $0.00! Cast: Complete Cast (13 total) |
The Hurricane Reviews
The theme of Transcendence is important--not the "factual debates about Rubin Carter ."
I was very touched by this movie. It was not the actual story/plot, or it's accuracy that was important to me. Rather, what was meaningful about this film was the portrayal of a personal Transcendence the main character brings about in his life--from rage, hate, and bitterness, to self caring, willingness to learning, inner directedness, to a sense of spirituality and something "bigger than himself," to forgiveness and "letting go," and then the untimate Transcendence--reaching out, risking trusting others with his core pain, and risking loving others. Also, this film portrays some very rare people who demonstrate commitment to their principles, determination to care about "the individual" and to rectifying an injustice. I do not know whether or not Rubin Carter murdered those people. From my stand point, this is a movie that models personal healing. It is touching and inspirational--even if it were to turn out to be total fiction.
The defining performance of Mr. Washington's career; brilliant
In the movie DISCLOSURE, with Michael Douglas and Demi Moore (based on the Michael Crichton screenplay), a high-powered, very ambitious and sexually potent woman sexually harasses Michael Douglas in a software company. The resulting chaos this causes in his personal and professional life forces him to accept the irony of his circumstance--him, a man, being harassed by a superior woman--and take her to court, or in this case, arbitration, to save his job. So much controversy was engendered by the plot of this movie and its relationship to the serious issue of sexual harassment (then a fairly new one) that most people ranting on either side about DISCLOSURE's true social significance forgot the actual plot of the movie, and as such, missed its real message: Demi Moore's character was brought to the software company Douglas' character worked for for the sole purpose of getting rid of him in the first place, such that a pretty immoral and essentially illegal business transaction could go through, making the principal stockholders rich. The movie actually begins where the famous sexual harassment subplot ends. Like ERIN BROKOVICH or WALL STREET, DISCLOSURE was not about sex and power, but really a window to the architecture and life-destroying immorality of corporate greed in its entirety.
I was slightly put off by some of the publicity surrounding the treatment of the subject matter that is the life of boxer Reuben Carter before this movie came out years ago. But I am still perplexed to the point of amused as to why everyone still rants about every aspect of the film's subject matter but not the actual film itself. Just as people still talk about DISCLOSURE as a sexual harassment irony movie, missing the actual point Michael Crichton was making about the business world, dissenting reviewers have missed the fact that it was a rival movie company's publicity staff who paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to see to it that all this historical controversy would make it to the news in time to prevent this movie from winning the many Oscars it probably would have won, without the stink surrounding it. The Oscars have so much money at stake for the studios that could win one for their movie they are almost as political as Washington, D.C. It wasn't the Smithsonian or Cornel West or Mike Wallace or CNN that broke this story, *it was the corporate greed of Hollywood, Inc. itself, doing so as part of a ruthless and pretty immoral business deal against a competing movie studio*. The very debate of Reuben Carter's actual historicity is as much a symbolically absurd morality play on the corporate greed of Hollywood (and the prevailing ignorance of our culture) as the plot of the movie is about the triumph of the human spirit.
This whole topic warrants mentioning only because it is, to this day, the secret architect of the opinions Norman Jewison's treatment of Hurricane Carter --above and beyond the overall message and artistic brilliance of the film as a whole--that is reflected in so many people's opinion of the film. History itself, if we're going to be honest, is a form of elitist narcisstic mythology more often than not (see the work of Howard Zinn [A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES], Noam Chomsky [UNDERSTANDING POWER], Edward Said [ORIENTALISM], Edward Hermann [THE TERRORIST INDUSTRY], Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed [WAR ON FREEDOM], Gore Vidal [BURR; LINCOLN; PERPETUAL WAR], et. al). The degree to which ALL history is a lie can be debated until the Exedrin is passed around like cocaine at a suburban garden party; it has little to no bearing on the mythic structure and relevant artistry of great filmmaking--striking at the heart of the actual purpose of history in the first place.
Regarding the possible racist unconscious underlying Hurricane Carter's quasi-historical portrayal: by the same token, virtually every movie made in Hollywood before 1978 and God knows how many afterwards, from BIRTH OF A NATION to GONE WITH THE WIND to DRIVING MISS DAISY to FRIDAY AFTER NEXT and beyond, shows the African-American community in such an absurdly one-dimensional and offensively inaccurate light that if we commented only on the historical/social inaccuracies inherent in the depicted subject matter we'd never know what the art form of film actually consists of, let alone what represents it well. MISSISSIPPI BURNING (1988), for example, so enraged Chaney's family members (of the Shwerner, Goodman and Chaney civil rights activists) that they held many a lecture in many a college regarding its blatant historical inaccuracies; historical inaccuracies obviously designed to whitewash history such that the film would be more palatable to the dominant culture of the Reagan Era 80s (as subtle racist apologia usually attracts liberal white audience for civil rights films and did so quite well during his administration). Yet no one, however, not even them, argued that Gene Hackman and Willem Defoe weren't incredible in it, and probably deserved Oscars nominations for their portrayals.
What made me see THE HURRICANE is why everyone should see it. Minor flaws notwithstanding (in construction, not research), director Norman Jewison creates a completely magnificent film. And the incomparable Denzel Washington gives what is undoubtedly the greatest performance of his career. From the very first moment the screen is filled with an image of Denzel as the boxer, you have no choice but to believe him and believe in him. Even the downright eerie way Washington completely became Malcolm X in Spike Lee's masterpiece is SURPASSED by the degree to which he took on and magnified the soul of Rueben Carter. I've seen most of Marlon Brando's work; I've seen James Dean's; I've seen the best of de Niro. I have never seen acting like this before, ever. The Oscar given to Denzel for his essentially phoned-in performance in TRAINING DAY a year later was as a "Sorry we screwed you over THE HURRICANE" Oscar.
See this film and believe in the nobility of the human spirit again.
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