What’s in a name?
Plenty, in the quietly riveting crime drama starring Jonah Hill and James Franco as very different yet over-identifying men bound by a lie and, it seems, so much more.
Caught in Cancun in 2002, fugitive Christian Longo told police he was Michael Finkel, a disgraced New York Times reporter.
He was not, but it was an intriguing lie.
Franco portrays Longo, who went on trial in 2002 for the killing of wife Mary Jane and their three young children — Sadie, 3, Zach, 4, and Madison, 2 — in Oregon. He was sentenced to death in 2003.
Based on Finkel’s 2005 memoir — “True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa” — the movie ponders the mysteries of ambition, lying and murder.
More, it delivers an intelligent portrait of co-dependency that has implications not just for its characters but also for those of us obsessed with true-crime tales.
Finkel’s plummet from journalistic grace was swift. He’s already returned from Manhattan to his and wife Jill’s Bozeman, Mont., home when he learns from a reporter about Longo’s theft of his identity.
Felicity Jones, so good in “The Theory of Everything,” plays wise observer more than active participant here. As Jill, she sees Mike drawn more and more to Longo.
One scene finds Mike showing her the eerie similarities between his Africa notebooks and the lengthy letter Longo wrote him from jail.
Let the dark psychological transference begin. But who’s using whom?
For Finkel, this is the scoop of a lifetime, his way back into publishing. What’s in it for Longo? He wants his story told — after the trial, he avers. He also wants to learn to write. But is that all?
Franco is built for movies, for the close-up. Here, he masters something that might be called dead-eye. Longo’s words work to wheedle a connection, to flatter, to imitate honesty. His gaze — a bit drowsy, a bit too calm — suggests less scrutable motives. Late in the movie, a phone call between Longo and Jill provides a deft exposition of manipulation.
Hill delivers a convincing portrait of the one-time quasar who was dismissed from his job after he conflated facts in a magazine cover story about the contemporary slave trade in Mali.
“I told you to write it up,” his editor (Gretchen Mol) fumes not unreasonably. “Not make it up.”
Although the movie is based on Finkel’s memoir, Hill’s portrayal doesn’t let him off the hook. And his involvement with Longo doesn’t clarify matters nearly as neatly as one might fear.
“True Story” is directed by British theater ace Rupert Goold. Credited with exceptional productions of Macbeth and Richard II, Goold turns out to be terrifically suited to the task of finding the uncomfortably resonant in this very ugly tale, which he co-wrote with David Kajganich.
Mysteries abound. Although the question “Did Longo kill his family?” isn’t nearly as bedeviling as why.
And though Finkel tries a few times to answer for his own crime — why, at the top of his game, did he feel compelled to twist facts of his Africa story? — his answers are never fully satisfying to us, or him.
With its tale of the dicey dance of writer and murderer, “True Story” resembles the artfully crafted “Capote,” also based on actual events.
In that film, director Bennett Miller and star Philip Seymour Hoffman created a profound portrait of a particular author, Truman Capote taken with a murderer.
“True Story” digs deeper into the cultural fascination with killers and attempts a potent corrective along the way, reminding us who’s been lost but also how justice isn’t just another gripping procedural.
With the help of cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi and composer Marco Beltrami, “True Story” is taut and pensive. It’s a handsome psychological study not just of unfathomable malevolence but also of our vexing fascination with killers.
The movie begins with a stuffed bear floating slowly downward toward a little girl curled up. She looks like she is sleeping. They look like they are spooning. But they are in a suitcase. It is an image of true American horror, muted and cruel. It is a tone “True Story’ maintains with gravity and grace.
Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567, lkennedy@denverpost.com or twitter.com/bylisakennedy
