Analisi di un delitto

I love legal thriller/mystery movies, and Murder of Crows was one of the best ones I've seen. Cuba Gooding plays a lawyer down on his luck who decides to write a book. His character in the movie mentioned John Grisham, which I thought was funny because I had just been comparing the movie plot to the way John Grisham writes. I was surprised and intrigued by Tom Berenger - he made quiet a convincing investigator. I think he would have been better cast as the main character.

The actors attracted me to this film. They were all in it and did a fair amount of acting. The plot was very original. Be forewarned; if you're an attorney, it's not flattering to you. Sample line..."Without lawyers, we wouldn't need lawyers."

This is one of those gimmicky plotted,elegantly produced movies that can be fun to watch if you go with the flow and don't dwell too much on the implausibilities.

Cuba Gooding is a lawyer who has a fit of conscientiousness and promptly gets disbarred. He travels to Key West and becomes friends with a retired Englishman who gives him the manuscript of a novel and asks for an opinion. The Englishman is found dead. Gooding decides to publish the novel as his own and then the fun begins.

Gooding has an engaging personality but his acting leaves something to be desired, his name is on the credits as producer (which in Hollywood can either mean a lot or nothing at all) so we would assume that he had read the script, but it doesn't always seem that way. He sometimes seems to be acting from off stage cues with his mannerisms at variance with the mood of the scene. In one scene, for no reason at all, he looks down at floor then shuffles his feet to another position as though he has just been told he is standing in the wrong spot.

The plot takes some not always credible twists and turns and we get that hackneyed scene where for no plausible reason the protagonist makes a run for it. In this case Gooding makes a surprisingly easy escape from a house swarming with cops, then of course we get the chance to visit some nicely photographed locations and to meet some quirky characters.

Tom Berenger does best in the acting department as a surly cop. He also has some of the best lines. He refuses a drink at one point with a terse "I never drink. It makes me feel happy."

Mainly for Berenger's performance and some nifty locations I give it 7 out of 10.

1st watched 4/27/2002 - 7 out of 10(Dir-Rowdy Herrington): Effective murder mystery with many convoluted plot-twists that are almost too much to believe, but good performances by Gooding, Berenger, and even Eric Stolz, in a somewhat minor role as far as the plot, does a good job. Without giving too much away this is basically about a lawyer who gets disbard for doing the right thing(turning in his guilty client) and then publishes a novel, which he really didn't write, about a lawyer-murderer and then is accused of the actual crimes that were mimicked from the book. That is quite enough in itself, but the story involved even more than that and is told at times from Cuba's characters perspective(which means of course that he isn't dead when it's over, but that‘s okay he‘s the star). The ending seemed a little too long and it worked too hard to make it happy for the viewer but besides that this was a well-done picture that is carried by the stars involved.

I rented this movie having never heard of it or Rowdy Herrington. I became an instant fan. The film is very good and so is the script. I admit to having figured it out but that was part of the fun. It's not a huge film starring Michael Douglas and budgeted by Warners but so often one rents a film that looks promising and it's simply awful. This was quite good and probably should have gotten more attention at the time it was released (if it indeed was released to theaters, which it should have been).