*Based On A True Story But With Some Unfortunate Major Changes

Rating: 6/10 (27 May 2006)

Yes it is a great performance by Hoffman and it shows the hustling Capote with his many personality and character flaws. *My main major complaint is that some huge reality issues of the true story were changed to accommodate a Hollywood story. You know, the usual BS that even talented writers engage in on this level of film-making. Two examples:1) To make the Capote/Smith bonding even more, errrrh, maternal, they show Capote giving Smith a reason to live as he feeds him baby food (get it folks!) when Smith is in an advanced stage of starving himself to death. The reality was that Smith's long lost father (who had a loaded rifle pointed at the junior Smith the last time they saw each other in Alaska) somehow heard of his son's plight and wrote a letter to him on death row. Ten years later, that is. This created an emotional response from his son that brought him back to life;his father cared for him
and he credits this with making him want to continue the fight against the state's decision to kill him. It wasn't Capote's loving care. 2) At the end, as the execution grew closer, Smith pleaded with the only friend he had left in life (was Hickok a friend?), Capote, to witness the execution. He would find this something of a consolation. Capote said he would and arrived in Kansas but couldn't face the actual hanging. So the sociopathic Smith, before the hood was placed over his head, scanned the faces, hoping for a final human contact. What an ending folks! In closing, why can't writers/filmmakers stay with the facts, the truth, when they're dealing with people's stories? In "Capote" they changed things to structure the story and make it (from their point of view exclusively) more "dramatically balanced". Make Capote more caring. Well, people's lives, in extremis, are often not neat;including scenes like this in a story is what can make for greatness in a movie.