Watch This Terrifice Story of Criminal Injustice

Rating: 10/10 (3 April 2008)

"The Hurricane" qualifies as Denzel Washington's best movie since Spike Lee's "Malcolm X." Truth is stranger than fiction, and "In the Heat of the Night" director Norman Jewison's "The Hurricane" proves it. Although Hollywood has tampered with the facts about Rubin Carter and his stormy relationship with the racist New Jersey criminal justice system, this knock-out "Rocky" meets "Les Miserables" biography about a erroneously imprisoned pugilist sticks closely to the truth. For example, nine Canadian hippies instead of three unearthed the evidence that ultimately freed Carter. Moreover, the Canadiansportrayed like the cavalry riding to the rescueresemble Bob Vila's elves rather than commune members! As a reckless youth, Rubin Carter attracted trouble like a magnet in a steelyard. Arrested as a juvenile for stabling a prominent white businessman thatCarter claimstried to molest one of his friends, Rubin comes under the constant scrutiny of racist Detective Sergeant Vincent Della Pesca (Dan Hedaya of "Tightrope"). Della Pesca devotes his career to railroading Carter. Later, Carter escapes from reform school and enlists in the U.S. Army, where he becomes a paratrooper and a middleweight boxer. No sooner has he returned home from the Army than Della Pesca arrests him again, and Carter has to serve out his reform school sentence.
Della Pesca hates Carter so much that when the latter achieves fame as a middleweight boxer, Della Pesca frames him for a triple homicide in a bar. Furthermore, he bribes two burglars that witnessed the crime to commit to testify that Carter committed the killings! Later, the burglars recanted their false testimony. While Carter won a retrial, the courts upheld his original conviction. Celebrities championed his case, but Carter languished in prison for 19 years. During that soul-eroding time, Carter penned his autobiography "The 16th Round." Years later at a used book sale, a black teenager, Lesra Martin (Vicellous Reon Shannon of "Hart's War"), found the book. Martin was a Brooklyn native living in Canada with members of a commune that had adopted him to tutor him for his college entrance exams. Carter's book touched Lesra, and he visited Carter in prison. They became close friends and pen pals. Eventually, Lesra's guardians began to smell a rat in the injustice dealt Carter. They moved from Canada and promised Carter that they wouldn't quit until he was exonerated.
Oscar-winner Denzel Washington of "Glory" excels as the incorrectly convicted boxer that earned his nickname 'Hurricane' from the gale-force rage of blows he dealt his opponents in the ring. Dan Hedaya, who was not surprisingly overlooked for his villainous portrayal of the evil Della Pesca, richly deserved a Best Supporting Oscar. Veteran director Norman Jewison, who made "A Soldier's Story," streamlines the truth for dramatic impact, particularly Della Pesca, not a real person but a metaphor for the corruption and injustice of the New Jersey criminal justice system. Despite the liberties that Jewison and scenarists Armyan Bernstein and Dan Gordon take with the truth, "The Hurricane" scores ten stars out of ten stars.