Love's gonna bust me out

Rating: Null/10 (19 January 2014)

"Everybody knows the fight was fixed, the poor stay poor, the rich get rich. That's how it goes. Everybody knows." - Leonard Cohen
Norman Jewison's "The Hurricane" stars Denzel Washington as Ruben "Hurricane" Carter, a middleweight boxing champ charged with triple murder. An all-white jury sentences Carter to life in prison. The film's second half watches as a group of Canadian activists struggle to get Carter released. The evidence used to indict him was manufactured, they claim, the African American Carter the target of racial persecution.
"The Hurricane" is cartoonish and simplistic, but boasts another infectious performance by Washington. The immaculately chiselled Deborah Kara Unger is also fine in a small role. The film was based on a real life incident, and its screenplay adapted from two books, one of which was Carter's own memoir. Over the decades, Carter's case would become a cause celebre; Muhammed Ali, Ellen Burstyn, Bob Dylan and a number of other figureheads would tout his innocence. Many believe the opposite. Regardless, law and legal systems have always been inherently racist and classist. To this date, studies estimate between five to ten thousand wrongful convictions in the US per year. For a better take on this material, see Jean-Xavier de Lestrade's "Murder on a Sunday Morning".
7.5/10 – Excellent in patches, but mostly conventional. Worth one viewing.