There's another side to the story...

Rating: 6/10 (3 June 2001)

There might be *SPOILERS* ahead...
The movie itself is a solid Hollywood picture, but after reading some comments and checking out info about the case, I felt confused. First of all, I'm still not sure if Carter and Artis committed these murders, but there seems to be a lot of documents and articles which proves they did. I'm not going to go to details here, but check out for starters www.graphicwitness.com/carter if you are interested. One example: In movie Carter is sent to jail as a boy for stabbing a man implied to be a pedophile. In reality, he stabbed somebody in the face with a beer bottle while robbing them.
One thing I don't understand is why they changed the facts so much in this movie and still this was marketed as based on true story. This might have been a good movie if they'd just make it completely fictional, but probably it wouldn't have sold as much. The championship fight scene seems also to be completely wrong, (from the Herald Sun) The Hurricane typically claims racist boxing judges robbed him, but every sportswriter who covered the fight agreed he was beaten by a better man. On the other hand, if they'd make this movie true to the facts, imo this movie would have been much more interesting.
I think it's a shame that Hollywood takes out a tragedy where 4 people were murdered and makes a disgrace towards them and their grieving friends and families by twisting the truth to make this movie better selling and getting more profit.
All in all, if ignoring this, the movie was pretty ok, although a bit too long (there was many scenes that could have been cut out) and some characters were just plain ridiculous, Canadians and of course Lt. Vincent Della Pesca, who was almost the opposite of the real detective). Denzel was good, maybe not Oscar nominee-good, but isn't the Oscars usually awarded to those who make most money, not those who have the most talent :)
One more quote from Herald Sun By ANDREW BOLT:
Of course, it's quite possible Carter is innocent. But is he still the right man to preach to us about reconciliation? While on bail for his second trial, he beat Carolyn Kelley, the (black) head of his Carter Defence Fund, so badly that she took a month to recover. ``He's Satan, and Satan can fool a lot of people,'' she says.