Excellent

Rating: Null/10 (14 November 2005)

By now, everyone has said that Truman Capote--I mean Philip Seymour Hoffman--is brilliant as is Catherine Keener as Harper Lee. So is Bruce Greenwood in the role of Jack Dunphy, though the actor like the real-life character he plays, becomes overshadowed by the star.
I found Chris Cooper as the K.B.I. agent understandably intense since he has to carry the weight for all of the folks in Kansas who were p.o.ed at Capote for doing things like finding Hickock and Smith an attorney for their appeal. Capote also found that he had to come down on the side of the victims or the killers in his focus if not his sympathy (though there is that, too, of course), and he ended up giving the victims short shrift. People who knew the family were ticked about that, too. (In an early scene, Capote tells Cooper's character that he doesn't care whether they find the killers or not. Cooper says that he cares very much. That is the start of the bad feeling between them, which never seems to resolve amicably.)