Crime Films

by J.J. Maloney

Motion pictures have a way of creating their own reality. It is only through the strange power of film that one finds an audience of ordinary people cheering Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lector, at the end of Silence of the Lambs, because Lector has not only gotten away, but plans to kill and eat the superintendent of the mental hospital Lector had been confined in.

Or "caper" films, in which the audience roots for the criminals who pull off a big job and get away (of course they often do this in real life, as anyone who remembers the Brink's Job will recall).

Or "Death Wish" philosophy films wherein rogue (but good) cops indiscriminately kill the bad guys because the "system" doesn't work anymore.

Because of a motion picture's power to capture the imagination, there have always been those who would harness this power to try to achieve one purpose or another.

by Lona Manning

Most people who know about the Hurricane Carter case only know the Hollywood version presented in the movie starring Denzel Washington. The Hurricane, released in 1999, features crooked, lying, racist cops and frightened witnesses who won't come forward. Carter himself is brash but noble, persecuted his whole life by one obsessed detective who keeps sending him to jail.

September 15, 2005

Tony Spilotro (Courtesy LVMPD)

by Dennis N. Griffin

Introduction