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Capote |
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 Release Date: 09/30/05 (Future Release)
Starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Clifton Collins, Jr, Mark Pellegrino, Bruce Greenwood
Director: Bennett Miller
Rating: (R) |
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Genre |
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Drama |
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Running Time |
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98 min |
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Distributor |
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Sony Pictures Classics |
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 Official Website |
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NEW YORK REVIEW
You’ll go to Capote just to see Philip Seymour Hoffman do a splendid impersonation of Truman Capote circa his In Cold Blood days—when the writer had achieved New York social status via Breakfast at Tiffany’s, yet still hungered to write a Big Book. But aside from yet another solid performance from Catherine Keener—playing a Harper Lee just preparing to publish To Kill a Mockingbird, and here to act as Capote’s unheeded moral conscience—that’s the only reason to see Capote.
Director Bennett Miller follows his title character out to Holcomb, Kansas, to investigate the murder of the Clutter family by Perry Smith (Clifton Collins Jr.) and Dick Hickock (Mark Pellegrino). There, Miller alternately cribs the black-and-white solemnity from Richard Brooks’s 1967 In Cold Blood movie or falls back on easy jokes about how the fey, fierce Capote bewildered and manipulated the local citizens. Anyone who knows the story will be bored; the only element Miller and screenwriter Dan Futterman add is a harsh judgment upon Capote’s cynical exploitation of Perry Smith’s infatuation with the writer, who is seen using the deadly yokel as Manhattan party-joke fodder.
Few under the age of 30—anyone who doesn’t carry around in his or her head the sight and sound of Capote’s cackling and sniping on Merv or The Dick Cavett Show—will care about this airless plod of a movie. Hoffman, to be sure, is impeccable. He doesn’t just do Capote as a venomous sprite with a lisp; he gets Capote’s gaspy mouth-breathing, and the way his slit eyes were both protection from and radiators of contempt. But if they gave Oscars for imitations, the late impressionist Frank Gorshin deserved one for his Kirk Douglas. Hoffman’s masterly exertions deserve a better movie surrounding them. — Reviewed by Ken Tucker, New York Magazine
FEATURE
The Monster from Manhattan (October 3, 2005 issue of New York Magazine)
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