A L S O_.T O D A Y Blue Glow Super Sunday for the Oscars; a boss is betrayed on "The Sopranos" "Forces of Nature" Reviewed by Mary Elizabeth Williams A romantic road comedy that packs plenty of thrilling scenery, but forgets about chemistry "Ravenous" Reviewed by Andrew O'Hehir Though it definitely requires a strong stomach, this may be the best cannibal tragicomedy ever made "Carrie 2: The Rage" Reviewed by Mary Elizabeth Williams A supernatural sequel tries a little tenderness, but still goes for gross   ___________________ Read J acquelyn Mitchard's bestselling "The Deep End of the Ocean" at barnesandnoble.com ___________________     Y E S T E R D A Y Harvey Keitel and the Sundance Kid By Jennie Yabroff An interview with "Three Seasons" director Tony Bui (03/18/99)   R E C E N T_. M O V I E S Home Movies By Charles Taylor "That Thing You Do!": Tom Hanks' sweet tribute to pure pop (03/15/99) Paths to glory By Michael Sragow From "Lolita" to "2001," Stanley Kubrick embodied the director as hero (03/09/99) "Analyze This" Reviewed by Stephanie Zacharek Robert De Niro gets the lion's share of laughs in Harold Ramis' mob comedy (03/05/99) "Cruel Intentions" Reviewed by Charles Taylor Retro morality makes for a pleasurably nasty update of "Les liaisons dangereuses" (03/05/99) "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" Reviewed by Mary Elizabeth Williams A hit English crime caper arrives in America jetlagged (03/05/99)   BROWSE THE MOVIE ARCHIVES COLUMNS FEATURES REVIEWS INTERVIEWS

TRUE PRIME | PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - After the huge success of "Unforgiven," Eastwood couldn't get away with being a surprisingly good self-taught director anymore, and the change seemed to unsettle him. He long ago became not just an actor/director but the head of a remarkably efficient and prolific filmmaking empire, but this never stopped him from taking certain well-calculated risks. If his more ambitious works like "Bird" and "White Hunter, Black Heart" were not great films in the end, they were worthy attempts. More recently, he's been drifting; his efforts to go upscale with "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" and "The Bridges of Madison County" were a little dispiriting, and the D.C. skullduggery of "Absolute Power" was surprisingly tepid. In "True Crime," Eastwood makes a happy return to the tension-building rhythms of the genre picture, where he has always been most comfortable. (I should think any Hollywood filmmaker would be proud of the westerns "High Plains Drifter" and "The Outlaw Josey Wales," and his directorial debut was the memorable thriller "Play Misty for Me.") "True Crime" is also a homecoming of a more literal sort. Assembling his usual group of able craftsmen, including cinematographer Jack N. Green, production designer Henry Bumstead and jazz-inflected composer Lennie Niehaus, Eastwood returns to the distinctive light and shadow of Northern California, where he was born and has spent most of his life. How many outsiders would understand that the yard at San Quentin, more days than not, is as gray, damp and bone-chilling as the Tower of London? Best known for his five films as a San Francisco cop, Eastwood has never before made a movie in Oakland, where he actually grew up, and it's hard to imagine a better setting for this yarn of imperfect redemption than the scruffy, multiethnic and oft-derided East Bay metropolis. (Full disclosure: Oakland is my hometown as well as Eastwood's, and I can't be expected to be impartial about it or him.) Ev bumbles around Oakland and environs in his rusted-out convertible, trying to overcome his own self-loathing, survive the implosion of his marriage and focus on the increasingly fishy details of the Beachum case. "I'm writing a human-interest sidebar," he snarls at a woman in the convenience store where the murder occurred. "Know what that is?" When she says she doesn't, he glares around him for a moment with vintage Eastwoodian contempt before saying, "I don't think I do either," and stalking out. Rushing through a paternal visit on his way to an interview, he carelessly knocks his own daughter off a kiddie-cart at the zoo, scraping her up badly. Even by the standards of Eastwood characters, Ev is an empty shell of a man. As he confesses to Beachum in their prison interview, he's beyond caring about God or justice or anything except his nose for a story. As we see in frequent cross-cuts, the man preparing to die in prison is far more dignified and mature, and has a happier family life. Beachum could easily have become a caricature of righteousness and religiosity, but Washington ("Out of Sight," "Clockers") brings a luminous soulfulness to his quest not to surrender to bitterness even in the face of horrific injustice. His scenes with his wife (Lisa Gay Hamilton of TV's "The Practice") and child, coupled with the obscene joviality of prison routine as the fateful moment approaches, build to a level of harrowing emotional intensity almost unprecedented in Eastwood's work. If Eastwood was never the angry-white-male fascist some assumed him to be after the "Dirty Harry" pictures, his political and moral stance has always been tough to classify. In "True Crime," he never wields a weapon of any kind, and it is surely one of the most forceful anti-death penalty films in recent memory (I'm guessing one of the screenwriters had Brendan Behan's "The Quare Fellow" on his desk) as well as a mordant satire about the corruption of the news media. As Woods' editor in chief -- whose most printable epithet for Ev is "you soulless sack of shit" -- puts it, "What are issues? People want to read about sex organs and blood. Issues are things we make up so they don't have to feel too nasty about it." More austere critics than I may view "True Crime" as a fundamentally patronizing film about a white hero trying to save a virtuous black victim. But as I tried to say earlier, Eastwood's peculiar genius lies in the way he lets us have our legends and eat them too. Depicting Ev as an irresistible rogue who finally does the right thing is perfectly consistent, in Eastwood's universe, with making clear that he's a flawed and unhappy human being, quite possibly too far gone to save himself. If we're drawn to the romantic scoundrel in this story rather than the family man, that's our problem. "True Crime's" slam-bang climax stretches plausibility to the snapping point before giving way to an undercooked denouement (and Bay Area natives may notice a few geographical gaffes). But it's one of the most compelling and heartfelt movies Eastwood has ever made -- three decades after "Dirty Harry," the eagle-eyed sheriff of American myth may have aged and mellowed, but he ain't giving up his badge. SALON | March 19, 1999