14th Hall of Fame

The Hurricane (1999)

I loved the premise. It's a great story idea and I'm a sucker for historical movies set in the mid 20th century. As soon as I seen this was abut events in the early 60's I knew I'd like it. The fact that it's based on a true story, is something else I usually like. How true is the story? I don't know? I've never heard of this case before or the boxer named Hurricane. Actually I've never seen Denzel Washington in much either. I guess he's often in action films and I don't usually get into those. But this looked promising.

I didn't care for the direction or editing of the film. There were scenes that started to explore something promising, then it's like the director cut those scenes short before they reached they emotional peak. Even though this was 2.5 hours, most of the scenes felt rushed. An example is: Hurricane shows hatred for the three white Canadians, as he was victimized earlier in his life and he doesn't trust them, and he ask them to stop writing him. Then in like the next scene he's best friends with them. There needed to be a bridge scene that brought the audience in on his icy heart melting and learning to trust the three Canadians who were trying to help him.

Same with the evil detective that frames him, why? We never really get a strong motivation for the detective to do what he did. The detective is a mere shadow and that's too bad as we need him to be fully fleshed out in order to feel Hurricane's pain.

I felt like the movie was almost making fun of the three white Canadians, they seemed odd and so goody-goody and happy. Are they all just really good friends who hang out 24/7 or what? Why do they do what they do and why are they always together? A little explanation about them and their motivations, would have helped. But a lot of the movie was like that, we were told what was happening but we never really experience it through character development.

The only scene that really got me was the first meeting between the boy and Hurricane. That was well done. Denzel rocked his role, but I didn't like the casting choices of the other four main actors (the three adults and the kid) they all felt two dimensional.

Still a good nom and worth watching.

WARNING: "Virginia's character" spoilers below

WARNING: "Virgina" spoilers below

WARNING: "No I didn't." spoilers below

"For god's sake give her some pants..." I read that at IMDB on a review, some of the funniest reviews I've read are there. You know if this had been a dark comedy I might have loved it. It reminds me of something that the King of B movies would make, Roger Corman - IMDb, Roger would love this movie, hell he'd rip it off, then add some cheesy comedy to it and make millions.

But this ain't no comedy, it's a drama and so I couldn't wrap my head around the idea that our protagonist would be hero, aptly played by a god fearing ex bluesman, Samuel L Jackson, does what he does. I'd give Jackson's performance a solid 5/5. He's always real good and the overall story of a trailer trash wastoid and her exploits was interesting too. But the whole chain-up-a-woman in your house bit belonged in a horror/thriller. Had the chains been left in the garage or had the cheese fun factor been ramped up I might have liked this.

In a way this reminds me of Buffalo 66....we have Christina Ricci once again being kidnapped by a creepy dude. Only in Buffalo 66 it was clearly a dark comedy which made it all surreal and funny. But here it's played seriously, and seriously if a Reverend went to his friend's house and found a woman chained to the radiator, he would make a bee line for the police, not have dinner with them.

I doubt anyone is surprised that I didn't like this...but I'm surprised that I really did like a lot of this movie, just not the tawdry exploitative stuff.