The true
story of Colin Warner’s wrongful conviction for murder in 1980 and his
subsequent 21 years in prison before he was finally exonerated. Despite a
strong lead performance by a fine actor, Lakeith Stanfield, the film suffers
from ‘true story syndrome’ and therefore seems pattered on many similar
legal dramas except with the details from this case's files plugged in as
appropriate. This means that there’s nothing we haven’t seen a hundred times;
the infuriatingly indifferent cops, the smarmy lawyers, the degenerate prison
lifers, the sadistic guards, the loved ones who never lose hope, the one
small-time lawyer who recognizes the merits of the case and takes it on pro
bono, etc, etc. I hate to sound callous about Warner’s actual story, because it
is an important one emblematic of a severe injustice that our system
continually fails to mend, but I’m considering the film as a work of art, and
unfortunately it simply isn’t very cinematic. For a far superior (and
fictional) treatment of the same basic situation; see HBO’s limited series The
Night Of… starring Riz Ahmed, John Turturro and Bill Camp (who plays the
good lawyer in Crown Heights).
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