Review of In Cold Blood (1967) by Candace M — 01 Jan 2006

Truman Capote's book [u]In Cold Blood[/u] supposedly looks into the tragic pasts and twisted relationships that drove the largely pointless murder of a family of four on a Kansas farm in 1959 by two unwitting criminals (having not read it, I can only defer from what has been said about it--hey, with as much reading as I have to do for classes, it's a wonder I watch any movies at all).

Looking only at the film adapted from his famous work, one only sees faint traces of these psychological underpinnings, as writer/director Richard Brooks has unwisely taken a story obviously driven by these elements of personal torment and fitted them into a by-the-numbers thriller of criminals on the run and the dogged police investigation that follows, complete with overly optimistic foreshadowing of the innocent Clutter family at the center of it all ("Daddy, I promised to teach Jolene how to bake a cherry pie!").

It's all engrossing and involving, but one can't help but get the sense that it's largely self-defeating in the end, as the mournful empathy that follows the two killers, presented largely via flashbacks to memories of childhood abuse and longed-for better days, acts less as an examination of the passive evil that grows out of a flawed society than as an obvious ploy to make the straightforward drama all the more profound.

When the killers are finally caught, tried, sentenced, and ultimately hanged, what should be a deeply emotive swell of conflicting injustice amounts to little more than a resilient echo of whimpering pity.

The movie benefits the most from the simplicity: static shots of individuals acknowledging their misdeeds, the stylistically barren black and white cinematography, and silent settings where the sound of a gunshot reverberates even more horrifyingly.

Yet these are only moments scattered throughout, as the film is bogged down with a standard crime thriller score and goofy editing devices that only detract from the horror deeply rooted in reality. Robert Blake is especially good as Perry Edward Smith, the most tragically disturbed of the two perpetrators.

The films crowning moment comes just before his execution, as he monologues about his relationship with his father before a window during a rainstorm; the external lighting and the water flowing down the plane reflects onto his face, suggesting and internal stream of tears in a transcendent moment of cinema.

His performance is strongest in evoking someone more aware of his own flaws than he is able to control them (just moments before he guns down the entire Clutter family, he stops his partner from raping the daughter, roaring "I hate people who can't control themselves.

"), even if his ability to do so is undercut by the shortsightedness of the screenplay.