worth seeing mainly because of Denzel Washington

Rating: 5/10 (27 March 2000)

"The Hurricane" was after "Magnolia" (decent, partly inventive work with some flaws) and "The Cider House Rules" (indecisive and boring take on abortion and incest) the third movie I've seen this weekend and in terms of quality it is somewhere in between the other two. Norman Jewison has made a moody, sometimes incredibly intense, but also predictable and somehow unsatisfying movie. It owes SO MUCH to Denzel Washingtons performance as Rubin Carter that one actually has to see it to believe it. I've always thought of Washington as one of the most reliable actors around, but in this film he was simply superb. He was so good that often I forgot how conventional the movie actually was. Don't misunderstand me, I really felt with Carter and was absorbed into the story of his life, but mainly because of Washington. The film relies on well known premises: You get the racist detective (I can't remember the actor's name right now, but he's played corrupt characters before, so that's just another case of lazy type casting) and you get the good ones, here in form of the Canadians and the black boy Lesra Martin and of course the Salomon-like judge in the courtroom finale. So "The Hurricane" does nothing more than corresponding to usual plot lines and characterizations. Well, that's not so bad in this case, but it prevents Jewisons film from becoming the outstanding experience it could have been. Furthermore I would have liked to see much more about the public and celebrity support Carter has got during his sentence; to play Bob Dylans song twice or three times and only to show a three minute demonstration scene is not enough. And there is an another scene which doesn't work for the film; it is the one where the canadians visit Carter in jail and he says that they can't imagine the inhumanity and the hell of the prison. Well, that might be the case, but we can only rely on Washingtons intense portrayal, the film itself never really gives us an impression of what Carter is talking about. After all, it is one of these movies, which when you are seeing them, amazes you and makes you want to value them better as they are. When it's over and you've got some distance between you and the movie, its conventional approach and treatment of the story becomes clear. I liked "The Hurricane" for its handful of truly ingenuine scenes and it's worth while for Denzel Washington, but the film itself is rather mediocre.