Capote

Reviewed by:
Pete Hammond

In Cold Blood is one of those works of great American literature that everyone is forced to read at some point…only to discover that it's actually good. Capote, a biopic about Truman Capote's quest to write the book, is the same kind of proposition: It's one of those art-house films that someone will force you to see, and you should. Philip Seymour Hoffman's three-dimensional—and often unflattering—portrait of Truman Capote, the man obsessed with writing the first "true crime novel," is what holds the flick together. But as Capote digs deeper into the brutal murder of the Cutter Family, the author gets intimately involved with the killers and their quest to avoid the death penalty. Shot in depressing gray tones (even better would have been black and white) and often unbearably grim, Capote is a first-rate character study of a man many thought they knew, but really didn’t—until now. And hell, at least it's not a book.