The Greatest Trick

Denzel Washington is one of those actors I can never decide about. Most of the time I think he is frustratingly worthy, choosing projects that I just don’t want to see. He also comes across as quite smug, and that is very off-putting. And then there’s Training Day and Man on Fire, both of which reveal a far more interesting range of acting requirements, and subsequently more interesting performances. This film, purporting to document the life of Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter, is sadly not one of these.

Carter is a middleweight fighter, presented as a kid from the wrong side of the tracks, unjustly treated by a racist police force and a justice system that was against him from the start. When he is accused of a triple murder in a bar in New Jersey, he goes to prison for the rest of his life, and while inside writes an autobiography. This book is subsequently picked up in the 80s by a young man, Lesra Martin, who identifies with Carter’s struggle and vows, with the help of his Canadian commune-dwelling educators (weird set-up that isn’t really explained at all), to get him out.

The movie is very uneven, at least 40 minutes too long, and really rather worthy. There are serious questions about the truth of what is presented (see the user comments on the IMDb page), though the film does admit on an opening title card that characters are composited and some events used with creative licence. Even so, about half way through I asked myself what the film was actually about. Was it a boxing movie, a prison movie, a movie about the power of the written word, or about racism? We get the majority of Carter’s story via the device of Martin reading his book, with a very irritating narrative voice-over, which just comes off as clunky exposition. When the film finally gets into the search for new evidence to help Carter in his trial, and becomes a courtroom drama, it develops some interest, but it’s far too late to resurrect audience enthusiasm.

Washington’s performance is right up there with the best of his ‘worthy’ ones, and it is clear that historically Carter’s fate was of some interest in a time of extreme social change (Bob Dylan’s song about him features strongly on the soundtrack, which is actually the strongest feature of the movie as a whole). One scene where the pressure of prison causes Carter’s mind to create three distinct personalities is impressive, but the story-telling is messy, and Washington can’t rise above a script which doesn’t actually give him much to do but pontificate for the last half of the film. As far as other performances go, Rod Steiger is the only one of any decent note (and he is fantastic), but John Hannah’s ‘Canadian’ accent is confusing, to say the least.

In terms of objectionable content, there is a fair amount of swearing, and clearly boxing and murders mean there is violence, but all this is contextually justified. The Empire magazine review calls the film ‘decent-minded and brilliantly-executed’; I might agree with the former (though basing the film more or less totally on one man’s autobiography doesn’t seem very balanced), but not the latter.