A True Story -- NOT!

Rating: 7/10 (21 October 2009)

Once again, we sit through a 2-hour-plus film that doesn't just claim to be based on a true story, but is actually "A True Story" period, only to learn that we've been lied to.
When you make "A True Story", the audience expects that the significant facts should be in the film. Of course there will be fiction in the film, but it should be insignificant stuff.
What the audience doesn't expect is that the key villain in "A True Story", the murderer, would in fact be someone else.
While Gordon was executed for murdering two boys and a ranch hand, Walter wasn't one of them. The film completely leaves out the rather important fact that Gordon's mother Sarah participated in the crimes, and was the one actually convicted of murdering Walter.
The film spent a great deal of time focusing on Gordon for some reason, but that time would have been better spent on Sarah. In addition to being factual, this female villain would have provided a balance to Christine's victimization. It might also have given the film a reason to be so long.
Of course, having the actual murderer in the film might interfere with the entirely fictional happy ending (the escape story, Davis's fate), and the public's mythology that only men kill children.
So, it doesn't really matter to me what the quality of the rest of the film is. It's a lie masquerading as truth.