Showing @ Cameo Cinema, Edinburgh until Thu 28 Mar

Lee Daniels / USA / 2012 / 107 min

Unlike this year’s elaborately produced book adaptations Cloud Atlas and Life of Pi, Lee Daniels’ interpretation of Peter Dexter’s 1995 novel is as subdued as it is unsettling. When Hillary van Wetter (John Cusack) is put on death row after a suspicious trial, investigative journalist Ward Jansen (Matthew McConaughey), his younger brother Jack (Zac Efron) and Ward’s writing partner, the black Englishman Yardley Acheman (David Oyelowo), attempt to make their names famous by clearing Wetter’s. Helping their investigation is Charlotte Bless (Nicole Kidman) who, while only having had written correspondence with the incarcerated van Wetter, has declared her undying love for him.

Set in the 60s, this alluring and seductive noir relaxes you into it with bold but stylised aesthetics of the sweat inducing Florida swamplands smothered in the thick treacle-like drawl of the Southern American accent. The heat is perpetuated by frequent scenes of a titillating nature usually indicatative a narrative brimming with lewd and sexual theming. However they’re incorporated into such a multilayered narrative that the highly sexualised depiction of the glamorous Charlotte becomes just another string in a web which includes racial equality, journalism ethics, unhappy families, repressed homosexuality and class distinctions; all still highly relevant issues.

Efron’s youthful Jack sees the action through a rose tinted naivety which acts to soften even some of the cruder scenes, the film becoming a sticky and stifling coming of age story as Jack is figuratively slapped into maturity. The position of the narrator, telling the movie’s plotting to another newspaper, gives the film a meta-journalistic viewpoint. This works to breakdown the distance between the audience and the action by revealing the story’s humanity and exposing the personal tragedy of these shocking life stories lapped up countless avid readers, a phenomena only amplified in contemporary society. Set in the wake of the civil rights movement, Daniels’ parallels the culture of casual racism against the many other ways in which people make excuses for their own misdeeds resulting in an intoxicating mix of romance, tragedy and thriller.

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