Cat-and-mouse game — minus the game part
TRUE STORY ★ ★ Starring: James Franco, Jonah Hill Directed by: Rupert Goold Running time: 99 minutes
There’s a fascinating true story at the heart of True Story, but somehow, the process of putting it on film has smoothed out the horror and smothered the inherent allure in the tale of a disgraced journalist who befriends an accused murderer.
Jonah Hill plays the former, New York Times writer Michael Finkel, whose string of cover stories for the paper’s magazine ended when it was revealed he’d created a composite character for a piece on the modern African slave trade.
Just as the hammer is falling on Finkel’s career, he gets a call from an Oregon reporter (Ethan Suplee) who wants his take on the case of Christian Longo, wanted for killing his wife and three children. When captured in Mexico, Longo gave his name as “Mike Finkel of the New York Times.”
Finkel, equally weirded out and flattered, writes a letter to Longo in jail and eventually arranges to meet him.
This and subsequent meetings have the potential to create crackling scenes of twitchy gamesmanship, newsman versus con man. But first-time feature director Rupert Goold, who also co-wrote, with David Kajganich, this adaptation of Finkel’s memoir, can’t quite get a grip on the tone. A bit of clever cross-cutting suggests similarities between the two men, but the film also throws in sunlit flashbacks to Longo’s wife and children, which add little to the proceedings.
It should be noted that this isn’t a story of identity theft. And while trailers for the film hold out the possibility of intricate paper puzzles in Longo’s writings, and real physical danger for Finkel, neither of these things come to pass either.
What remains is a cat-andmouse game in which the mouse is already in a trap, and the cat has one paw tied behind its back. (I know; a simultaneously disturbing and adorable notion.)