Plot: What’s it about?
What do you get when you take one of the most highly sought-after actors of our time (Denzel Washington) and one of the most critically acclaimed directors of our time? Well, you end up with a movie with the calibur of “The Hurricane”. The Hurricane is the true life story of Rubin Carter, a man who spent the better part of his childhood and his life, in prison. Rubin was from New Jersey, and during the pre-Civil Rights era, that was a tough part of the country to be from. Carter and his friends were playing when a highly respected business man starts propositioning them for unknown reasons (though we are led to beleve that he’s some sort of petafile). Rubin sticks up for his friends and ends up stabbing the man (though he didn’t take his life), and is unjustly sentenced for the next ten years of his life in a boys home. A few years short of his sentence being up, Rubin escapes and joins the war effort, only to return home a few years later and is promptly arrested and forced to do the rest of his time.
The Hurricane takes off as soon as Denzel takes the screen. We first meet him as a teenager who is returning from the Army, only to be promptly arrested and put back into prision. It’s then that he makes up his mind that he will fuel all of his rage and anger into being a better boxer. Time passes, and indeed Rubin becomes a great boxer earning the nickname “Hurricane”. For a few years of his life he manages to become a celebrity of sorts and is a top ranked boxer, then fate intervines…For some unknown reason (and it still is), two black men walk into a bar and shoot and kill three white people (customers in the bar). It’s the bad luck that at aournd the same time, Hurricane is spotted. With a vengenance that is unknown to the audience, Det. Vincent Della Pesca (Dan Heyada) engineers it so that Carter and a friend of his are the ones to take the fall for the violent crime that has just occured. Hence, Carter is imprisioned again as is his friend who was just taking him home. It’s then that Carter tries to take the cases to court and is promptly denied and hence writes a book “The Sixteenth Round”.
We then meet the rest of the cast of Terry, Lisa, Sam and Lesra. Terry, Lisa and Sam are three Canadian home renavators who take in an uneducated Brooklyn youth named Lesra and educate him. They give him chances that he would never have and he’s even college bound. Out of sheer luck, Lesra buys the book that “The Sixteenth Round” written by Carter some fifteen years ago and develops a rapport with the imprisioned boxer. He communicates and the whole group become one tight bond as they struggle to help free the wrongly-imprisioned man…
The Hurricane is very emotional and very moving. Denzel Washington was cheated out of an Oscar nomination if you want my opinion, and it’s a very well made film from a living legend in Norman Jewison. A strong supporting cast featuring John Hannah, Liev Schrieber and Deborah Kara Unger add to an already impressive movie. The disc is loaded with extras and is well worth the price of a rental for sure.
Video: How does it look?
The Hurricane is filmed and presented in a 1.85:1 anamorphic transfer that looks great on the screen. While a few artifacts exist, it’s nothing to take away from the sheer image itself. The movie is about 60/40 black and white to color, with the color taking place in the present (1980 being the present) and the rest being in the past (1960’s). I was a bit disappointed by the very few errors that I noticed, and for a new film directly to DVD, they shouldn’t really exist. Don’t let this paint a bad picture of the disc, because it’s anything but bad.
Audio: How does it sound?
While not reference quality for your speakers, The Hurricane will put them all to good use. A remastered version of “The Hurricane” by Bob Dylan sounds good,the dialogue occupies most of the movie. The center channel (dialogue) is clean and crisp and I could find no distortion at all. The surrounds, while active at times, mainly remain silent and it’s basically a good surround mix. Not a bad effort from Universal…
Supplements: What are the extras?
Universal’s “Collector’s Series” has expanded and is not as “exclusive” as it used to be. While it will be hard to top the amount of extras on discs like “Apollo 13”, The Hurricane doesn’t fall that short. A feature-length commentary by Normal Jewison is the highlight of the film and it adds insight that was left to the imagination when watching. There are some six deleted scenes, each with a personal introduction by Jewison and he explains why they were cut out. Only one really adds some reason to why it was cut out, but all are very interesting. As Universal is doing more and more with their titles, a Behind the scenes look is included that runs about 20 minutes, this includes interviews with the cast and crew as well as their real-life counterparts, which is very interesting…Other than those, it’s a standard Universal edition which includes Production Notes and cast bios and a trailer. Overall, The Hurricane is a fine film and one that I will personlly watch again, the extras make it all the more enjoyable. Nice work here, Universal, though we could have used a few more extras to warrant the “Collector’s Edition” label.
