In True Crime, Clint Eastwood's back in San Francisco, Dirty Harry territory, only this time, instead of a Magnum .57, he's lugging around a stenographer's notebook. A reporter for The Oakland Tribune, Eastwood's Steve Everett has spent the latest portion of his career falling down the ladder of success one rung at a time. Like Dirty Harry, Everett breaks all the rules, but if Harry Callahan always got his man, Everett always gets his woman, especially when she's the wife of one of his editors. Well, not always: The 69-year-old Eastwood actually gets turned down a couple of times in True Crime, but I'll say this for him--he looks better in defeat than most of us look in victory. Here, as in Tightrope, Unforgiven, In the Line of Fire and Absolute Power, Eastwood's playing a grumpy old man looking for a little salvation, and the role fits very comfortably on his haggard frame, his mountain range of a face. Everett, whose career has been left for dead, springs back to life when he's assigned to write a human-interest story on Frank Beachum (Isaiah Washington), a convicted murderer scheduled to be executed at midnight. Something about Beachum's case doesn't smell right, but there isn't a lot of time to nail down the odor. True Crime quickly turns into a game of "Beat the Clock" as Everett tries to save both Beachum and himself. Did I say "quickly"? Eastwood hasn't done anything quickly in years, if ever, but only recently has his deliberate pace, both as an actor and a director, seemed like the gait of a geezer. True Crime, which clocks in at a little over two hours, should have arrived at the finish line a good half-hour earlier. There's built-in suspense, but it keeps leaking out the sides of the scenes. Only when James Woods, as an editor infatuated with the sound of his own voice, is around does the movie really kick into gear--then and during the scenes in which Beachum is prepped for oblivion. The movie wants to be a combination of His Girl Friday and Dead Man Walking. It comes close...
...then has to sit down and rest.
