An exquisite adaptation of one of the landmark novels of American literature, In Cold Blood tells the tale of two men who murdered a Kansas farm family in the late 1950s. It's a tremendous film, not just because of the excellent acting, beautiful direction and intelligent writing it showcases, but because it succeeds in showing us that no matter how extraordinary evil may seem, it is the very ordinariness of evil that is most compelling.
Perry Smith (Robert Blake) and Dick Hickock (Scott Wilson) were two-bit criminals looking for the perfect score. They thought it would be robbing the Clutters (John McLiam, Ruth Storey, Brenda Currin and Paul Hough) of the $10,000 dollars a cellmate of Dick's had told him Mr. Clutter kept in their farm house. There never was any $10,000, though. Just 40 bucks, a radio, a pair of binoculars and 4 brutal murders. As Alvin Dewey (John Forsythe) of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation takes on the case, Perry and Dick flee to Mexico, only to run out of money and have to crawl back to the United States. As the two men responsible for one of the most sensational crimes of its time desperately scrabble along, Dewey and the forces of the Law inch closer and closer.
Perry and Dick are eventually captured in Las Vegas, confess and are shipped back to Kansas for a trial that ends with a jury taking only 40 minutes to sentence them to death. It takes 5 years on death row for their appeals to be exhausted, 5 years of waiting before Perry and Dick have their date with the hangman's noose and executions even more cold blooded than the slayings of the Clutter family.
What first attracted Truman Capote to this story must have been the idea of American innocence shattered by savagery. What he ended up writing was something that forced us to confront the humanity in the men who committed such inhuman acts. This motion picture by Richard Brooks follows that same path. Perry Smith and Dick Hickock aren't monsters. They aren't even exceptionally bad men. They're both battered dreamers who were born into life's ditch and never managed to crawl out of it. Yet this film makes no excuses for Perry and Dick as they never made any for themselves. As they drive 400 miles to the Clutter farm, there's no attempt to deny the chilling self-centeredness of our two soon-to-be killers and their disregard for everything but their own wants and needs. That's what most evil is in this world. It isn't a compulsion to hurt others. It's simply not caring who you have to hurt to get what you want.
The performances by Robert Blake and Scott Wilson are superb. Blake has the showier role as Capote was drawn to the inner turmoil of Perry Smith and the paradox of such a seemingly bright soul driven to such dark deeds. Blake brings out the deep well of emotion in Smith, depths that allowed him to revel in childish fantasies of buried treasure and gave him the strength of will to obliterate an entire family. Wilson, though, is just as good in capturing the shallow, shark-like quality of Hickock. He lets you see that it's Dick's lack of emotional depth that makes him both more functional than Perry in normal society and weaker than Perry in moments of crisis. If Perry feels the world too intensely, Dick lives in a state of denial so profound it couldn't be cracked with an atom bomb.
Shot in black-and-white, In Cold Blood has some of the most stunning images you'll see. Even after decades of increasingly stark and graphic violence in popular culture, there are still moments in this movie that will grab your heart and squeeze. And a scene with Perry looking out a window on death row, the rain outside reflected onto his face like tears, is absolutely beautiful.
If you haven't read In Cold Blood, watching this movie will make you want to read it. If you've already read the book, watching this film will make you want to read it again. That's about the highest praise you can give this sort of work and I give it without hesitation.
Perry Smith (Robert Blake) and Dick Hickock (Scott Wilson) were two-bit criminals looking for the perfect score. They thought it would be robbing the Clutters (John McLiam, Ruth Storey, Brenda Currin and Paul Hough) of the $10,000 dollars a cellmate of Dick's had told him Mr. Clutter kept in their farm house. There never was any $10,000, though. Just 40 bucks, a radio, a pair of binoculars and 4 brutal murders. As Alvin Dewey (John Forsythe) of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation takes on the case, Perry and Dick flee to Mexico, only to run out of money and have to crawl back to the United States. As the two men responsible for one of the most sensational crimes of its time desperately scrabble along, Dewey and the forces of the Law inch closer and closer.
Perry and Dick are eventually captured in Las Vegas, confess and are shipped back to Kansas for a trial that ends with a jury taking only 40 minutes to sentence them to death. It takes 5 years on death row for their appeals to be exhausted, 5 years of waiting before Perry and Dick have their date with the hangman's noose and executions even more cold blooded than the slayings of the Clutter family.
What first attracted Truman Capote to this story must have been the idea of American innocence shattered by savagery. What he ended up writing was something that forced us to confront the humanity in the men who committed such inhuman acts. This motion picture by Richard Brooks follows that same path. Perry Smith and Dick Hickock aren't monsters. They aren't even exceptionally bad men. They're both battered dreamers who were born into life's ditch and never managed to crawl out of it. Yet this film makes no excuses for Perry and Dick as they never made any for themselves. As they drive 400 miles to the Clutter farm, there's no attempt to deny the chilling self-centeredness of our two soon-to-be killers and their disregard for everything but their own wants and needs. That's what most evil is in this world. It isn't a compulsion to hurt others. It's simply not caring who you have to hurt to get what you want.
The performances by Robert Blake and Scott Wilson are superb. Blake has the showier role as Capote was drawn to the inner turmoil of Perry Smith and the paradox of such a seemingly bright soul driven to such dark deeds. Blake brings out the deep well of emotion in Smith, depths that allowed him to revel in childish fantasies of buried treasure and gave him the strength of will to obliterate an entire family. Wilson, though, is just as good in capturing the shallow, shark-like quality of Hickock. He lets you see that it's Dick's lack of emotional depth that makes him both more functional than Perry in normal society and weaker than Perry in moments of crisis. If Perry feels the world too intensely, Dick lives in a state of denial so profound it couldn't be cracked with an atom bomb.
Shot in black-and-white, In Cold Blood has some of the most stunning images you'll see. Even after decades of increasingly stark and graphic violence in popular culture, there are still moments in this movie that will grab your heart and squeeze. And a scene with Perry looking out a window on death row, the rain outside reflected onto his face like tears, is absolutely beautiful.
If you haven't read In Cold Blood, watching this movie will make you want to read it. If you've already read the book, watching this film will make you want to read it again. That's about the highest praise you can give this sort of work and I give it without hesitation.