Review: Infamous (2006)

Infamous

Rating

Director

Douglas McGrath

Screenplay

Douglas McGrath (Novel: George Plimpton)

Length

1h 50m

Starring

Toby Jones, Sandra Bullock, Sigourney Weaver, Gwyneth Paltrow, Isabella Rossellini, Peter Bogdanovich, Jeff Daniels, Daniel Craig, Juliet Stevenson, Michael Panes, Hope Davis, John Benjamin Hickey, Lee Pace

MPAA Rating

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Review

A big city socialite and raconteur meets the small town community reeling from the recent grizzly murders of a family of four in the dazzling and involving Infamous.

What passes for wit and style in the night clubs and smoke-filled backrooms of New York City doesn’t typically fly with salt-of-the-earth types in remote towns in the Midwest. Celebrated wit and author Truman Capote (Toby Jones) finds this out first hand when he and writer Nelle Harper Lee (Sandra Bullock) leave their society bubble in search of a story in Holcomb, Kansas. There a home invasion turned gruesome will form the foundation for one of his most celebrated works. First he has to overcome the reticence of an entire citizenship unaccustomed and wary of big city folk invading their small town ways.

Through Nelle and the sheriff’s wife, the community is opened up to him and he learns the background details of what transpired, but it’s the arrest of the crime’s two perpetrators that enables Truman to find the life and breath of what will eventually become In Cold Blood. There are certain actors who can so effortlessly capture the essence and mannerisms of a character that you could swear you were watching the original character in action. Jones gives such a performance. As Truman, he embodies the dialect, speech patterns, and physicality of Capote, bringing the audience into the foppish heart of its witty protagonist. As he explores the depths of Truman’s obsession with the murders, especially the personable guise of one of the two killers, Perry Smith (Daniel Craig), it’s impossible not to feel the weight of the events on his emotional well being.

Craig makes a stellar foil for Truman, impressing up on the towering literary figure his charm and innocence, stolen by the vicious crime he and his associate Richard Hickock (Lee Pace), a more violent and sociopathic figure, have committed. The entire cast is superb from Bullock as Truman’s friend, the dowdy Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird to Jeff Daniels as Holcomb’s sheriff who is at first leery of Capote’s interest and desired access to the crime, but who becomes a trusted associate in his pursuit of justice.

Infamous was in production at the same time as Bennett Miller’s Oscar-winning Capote, which managed to jump the release window to come out the prior year. Everything about Miller’s film is superficial, dealing with the writing of In Cold Blood in an almost cold and clinical manner. There’s no emotional depth in the film, especially when compared to the more warm and emotionally resonant Infamous. As far as comparisons go, the most startling difference between the two is how much better Jones is in the lead role. Philip Seymour Hoffman may have been good in small films as a character actor, but in the lead role, he felt stilted and mechanical. When you compare the two, it’s hard to believe that Hoffman would have won an Oscar for this performance and Jones wouldn’t have even merited a nomination. Such is the perfidy of beating other films to the jump and gaining all the attention when something far better is just around the corner. It also didn’t help that the studios behind the two films were night-and-day in their awards circuit manipulations.

Anyone who appreciates true crime may already be familiar with In Cold Blood, it was required reading in some high schools and universities as an example of how to sensationalize your story while remaining humble. Much like Capote’s bestseller, Infamous manages to create a brilliant and involving primer for viewers to understand all the challenges and dangers inherent in researching and conveying events that might otherwise have been lost to time. As much as In Cold Blood helped these horrifying events become the foundation on which the modern fascination with true crime stories and feature films was built, so too does Infamous bring the probative investigation to vivid life.