“In Cold Blood” Review”In Cold Blood” is a tragic story of two men, Eugene Hickock andPerry Edward, who murder an entire family in search of money and then findthemselves running from the law. While writing the book, Truman Capoteused only facts to create a novel out of an actual event. He had thousands ofnotes on the subject, but his problem was making his book read like a novel. He accomplished this by adding dialogue and describing characters feelings.
This technique is used in the film as well when flashbacks of characterschildhoods are shown. The different plots are handled very well in the movie. The main plotobviously is the murders and the run from the law. Other subplots that areshown are Smith’s internal fight with his past in which his father deserted him,and at one point, had a gun pointed to his head.
Also there appears to betension between Smith and Hickock. They think differently at times,especially when it comes to the discussion of the crime. You can’t help butfeel sympathetic towards Smith, as it appears that he is forced into this byHickock. All characters in the movie were played well by the actors in myopinion. They all seemed real and seemed to fit in with the setting and thetime period. I think that Hickock and Smith are not victims of forces beyond theircontrol, they are victims of, at least in Smith’s case, a bad upbringing.
Thetwo murderers have no direction in their lives. The only skills that Hickockseems to know is how to steal things and how to write phony checks. Smithseems more sane than Hickock, but all he has is his guitar and that is stolen inMexico. This is reason that these two resort to crime to solve their problems. The film was very well structured in comparison to the book. Capotepurposely didn’t tell the detailed version of the deaths until the end of thebook, and the same procedure was followed in the movie.
This technique isused to keep the viewer or reader interested throughout the entire story. Thefirst part of the movie moved a little slowly, but I think this was necessary toshow all the background information about the Cutter family and to showhow the two murderers developed their plan. Once the night of the murdersarrived, the plot moved very quickly and there was lots of suspense to keepthe viewer interested. At the end of the film, after the hanging of the two murderers , I did notfeel that justice had prevailed. After an entire family has been murdered,there is no justice because the people are already dead and there is nothingthat can be done to change that. Even though Smith says that he apologizesfor what he has done, it is meaningless because it doesn’t change anything.
One reason the film seems like it was a real event is how the producersrecreate the setting of the late 1950’s in America. Everything is correct fromthe social lives of people to the music that was popular in that era. The US isin a period of transition, and this is shown by the way people react to thecrime. After this crime, people become suspicious of even the closest of theirfriends, and they begin to lock their doors at night to prevent more crimes likethis. Truman Capote became extremely successful as a result of this novel. I think that it is very similar to novels written today, and if it was published inthe 1990’s, it would be just as successful as it was when it was first publishedin 1966.
Today big writers such as John Grisham and Patricia Cornwellcould be compared to Capote, but they do not use real world events for theircrime-fiction novels. This is what sets Capote apart from other writers andmakes him one of the great writers in American History. ————————————————————– .
