Great film, but...

Rating: 7/10 (13 February 2000)

This was probably one of the most triumphant and emotional films I have seen for a long time. The story of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter took us through all his troubles from boyhood to his manhood, to when he was finally released. It's a crowd pleaser at its best, criticizing the prejudice and injustice in the society because of difference of a person's color. One criticism I'd like to make is the focal point. Throughout the film, the point of view shifts from Lesra, Hurricane, and the Canadians. The film starts us off with the arrest of Hurricane, and then it goes to view of Lesra, or Hurricane's view through Lesra when he is reading Hurricane's book. Even with the shifts in point of views in the first half, the film holds on. But in the second half, it almost seems like a detective story when the Canadians investigate the case of Hurricane. During the sequence, the film is shot almost like a mystery-suspense story which does not exactly fit in with the first half of the film. Also, Lesra is not shown during the investigation sequence. He is not shown until the last moments of the film, which seems very akward. It was almost as if Lesra was put in in the last minutes of the film to force emotion out of the audience. But other than the point I just made this was overall a great film. It could have been better, though, if some picky little things were fixed. But the problem with the focal point wasn't that big of an issue. But anyway, awesome acting, direction, great cinematography(Roger Deakins! Yeah!!), just overall a great film. ***1/2 out of ****.