Review of Murder in the First (1995) by Yurica T — 27 Oct 2012

Adding to My Mental Kevin Bacon Game.

Why is it that so many of these issue movies are so devoid of fact? The historical figures are not anywhere near so heroic or tragic or what have you, despite the fact that there are plenty of stories which do make whatever point they care to. It would not be all that difficult to find a story which accurately demonstrates that the prisons of the 1930s and '40s were desperately in need of reform. I mean, they've made an astonishingly accurate movie showing that the asylums of that era needed reform. It wouldn't take much effort to find a similar story in the prisons. There are plenty of accurate stories about the failings of the death penalty, but you get tripe like that horrid Kevin Spacey movie we did. There are plenty of people over the years who are falsely imprisoned, so you don't need to make movies about boxers who, no really, actually killed the people they were in prison for killing. It just makes people arguing against the status quo look foolish, because they're believing--and spreading--untruths.

According to the movie, and we'll get to the truth later, Henri Young (Kevin Bacon) stole five dollars from a store to feed his starving sister. However, that store was also a post office, and that made it a federal crime. Therefore, he ended up at Alcatraz, where he became part of the escape attempt wherein Doc Barker was killed. Henri survived, and though the law held that men could only be kept in solitary confinement for nineteen days, Henri was kept there for three years. He was only allowed out for a single half-hour exercise break in that whole time. Upon his eventual release from solitary, he snaps and kills another prisoner in the cafeteria. Despite having committed his crime in full view of literally hundreds of people, he still gets a trial, as is his legal right. His attorney is public defender James Stamphill (Christian Slater), who makes the argument that it is the system at Alcatraz that is the real killer, and that Henri is only a tool of the system.

That whole "he only stole five dollars!" thing is awfully poignant, which is probably how you should have guessed that it is, in fact, complete and utter crap. The killing of Rufus McCain (David Michael Sterling) was not, in fact Henri Young's first murder. (It's worth noting that, while no one knows why Henri did it, McCain was also part of that ill-fated escape attempt.) In fact, he was fifteen when he committed his first murder. He had held a hostage before. He was a deeply unpleasant person in just about every respect. What's more, he was back in the general population bare months after the escape attempt. While it's entirely possible that he spent longer in solitary confinement than was legally permitted, it was assuredly not three years. However, you can't defame the dead, so they didn't have to worry about the families of Milton Glenn (Gary Oldman) and James Humson (Stefan Gierasch) coming after them.

Even had I not gone and looked all that up--because of course I did--I'm not sure I would have found this movie particularly effective. Kevin Bacon gives the most ridiculous, over-the-top performance I think I've ever seen. (Well, okay; some of the work of Nicolas Cage gives it a run for its money.) I don't know why they think three years of solitary confinement would do this to a person; most of his performance seems to require at least low-level retardation before he went into the dungeons in the first place. And if he were, in fact, retarded before he went into the dungeons, that would be the sort of thing that a wise defense attorney ought to bring up as further evidence of diminished capacity. Even in those days, that actually was a thing.

In the end, Alcatraz was just too expensive. That's the real secret. Every drop of water had to be either collected from rain or else carried over by boat. Carrying over food was almost certainly more efficient than growing it there, given the amount of water it would take. The guards' families lived on the island, probably because it was deemed better for the guards psychologically, but there were quite a few logistical problems with that. Among other things, it meant that the children had to be shipped back and forth to the mainland for school. We have a belief that the prisoners of Alcatraz were the worst of the worst, but that wasn't always true. However, it just generally wasn't cost-effective to keep the prison running. Besides, time at Alcatraz was bad enough even without spending three years in a Civil War-era basement.