March 27, 2008
The Hurricane
Prolonged Victory
With the middleweight boxer Rubin "Hurricane" Carter's life, director Norman Jewison was handed a story with all of the makings for a great film. Racism, corruption, personal anger and passion, murder, intrigue, compassion, hatred, deceit and triumph; all are at the heart of Carter's story. Denzel Washington (Malcolm X, Philadelphia) becomes Carter's torment and anguish in the film, yet his performance nearly becomes The Hurricane’s only remaining believable and touching pillar of the struggle, turmoil, pain and beautiful, prolonged victory that was and is Carter’s life.
Somewhere along the way, much of the depth and humanity of the story slip through Jewison's fingers. Carter’s tale has something incredible and marvelous and baffling at its center, but the film version of his story has trouble discovering, or at least showing the audience, what that might be. Director Jewison seems to flirt with making the vast racism of the era, the early 1960s to the mid 1980s, the primary focus of his film, only to shy disappointingly and sadly predictably away.
The film opens with a ravenous white crowd cheering and jeering as two black boxers beat each other ruthlessly in a small boxing ring. But the ring seems more like a cage and the sport seems more like a grim, perverted display of mid-evil and inhumane entertainment. Later, Washington channels Malcolm X while watching race riots on T.V. when he says to a reporter, "Maybe I should grab my gun, shoot me half a dozen of them nigger-hatin' cops."
Throughout the film Washington's character is haunted by a white cop named Della Pesca, played sloppily by Dan Hedaya (A Civil Action, In & Out). Della Pesca has made it his life mission to put Carter behind bars with his only visible motive being that Carter is black.
Moments like the opening scene, Carter’s take on the race riots and Della Pesca's burning hatred for him, open up an important and difficult discussion about America’s own institutional, historical and consistent racism, but never explore them further.
One partially true, sappy and often poorly developed side story goes along way toward drowning the story's natural passion. Three white, Canadian philanthropists and their once-illiterate black pupil Lazarus move to New Jersey after reading Carter's book, The 16th Round. This hazily depicted band of do-gooders uncovers the evidence that eventually frees Carter from prison, clearing him of the triple homicide he was falsely convicted of nearly twenty years earlier. While this side bar is essential to Carter's life story, it is also rendered with a shallowness and lack of understanding that eventually smothers the film.
Threads of a profound discussion about America's deep seeded racism run through the film, but they are thin and hard to follow. Ultimately this discussion takes a far back seat to the bland, unfeeling, cookie cutter Hollywood compassion that drives the story of Lazarus and the white Canadians. Even so, the heart of Carter's story remains intact in the film. Washington’s often unsettling and unwaveringly dedicated performance and Carter’s heartbreaking, soul-churning life story make this film a good one. But with that much going for it already, the most notable aspect of The Hurricane is its glaring inability to finish what it starts.
