a
couple of film industry heavyweights are coming together to bring the
story of a tragically famous middleweight to the big screen. Director Norman Jewison and Oscar-winning actor Denzel Washington team up to interpret the Rubin "Hurricane" Carter story with The Hurricane. Carter, who was a contender for the world middleweight title in the mid-'60s, had his boxing career as well as his hopes of a normal life dashed when he was wrongfully convicted of a triple murder in Paterson, New Jersey, in 1966. |
The boxer and his
19-year-old friend John Artis were convicted on testimony from two
career criminals. They spent the next 18 years (from 1967 to 1985) in
New Jersey prisons. The case gained widespread attention in 1975 with the release of Bob Dylan's single, "Hurricane," which told the boxer's story. That same year, Muhammad Ali, prior to his fight with Ron Lyle in Las Vegas, told reporters, "I'm dedicating this fight to Rubin Carter." In spite of these celebrity endorsements, it took the efforts of a teenager from the Brooklyn ghetto (Lesra Martin) and his adoptive Toronto family to gain clemency for the fighter. Hurricane director Norman Jewison was honored at last year's Oscars with the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, which recognizes "producers whose bodies of work reflect a consistently high quality of motion picture production." His long list of noteworthy films includes Moonstruck (1987), A Soldier's Story (1984) and Fiddler on the Roof (1971). The 73-year-old Toronto-born
director has also had a few flops in his long career (Bogus, Only You)
but The Hurricane just may go down as his comeback film (of course,
you'd have to believe that he really had somewhere to come back from). To add a certain poignancy to that
evening's screening both Carter himself and Lesra Martin were in
attendance. The audience was well aware of the fact that they were
watching a film about a man unjustly imprisoned for 18 years while
Carter watched along with them. Of course, Denzel gets the lions
share of the screen time since the movie is about his character. But
more than that, it's a film about one man rising above circumstances
that would turn most of us hard and bitter to become a spokesperson for
the plight of But The Hurricane is also about the tenacity of a teenage boy - Lesra Martin - who stumbled upon Carter's autobiography at a used book fair and was inspired enough by what he read to make a difference in another man's life. Or, as Hurricane Carter says about
his journey from incarceration to freedom: "Hate got me into this
place, love got me out." |