Customer Reviews

Murder in the First (Snap Case Packaging)

5 star:		(39)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This is a remarkable piece of Hollywood filmmaking, one of the best big studio efforts of the 90's and it was so poorly marketed that few have seen - or heard of - this picture.

The too often (and sometimes easily) dismissed Kevin Bacon is here Henri Young, a role as powerfully haunting as any actor could dream of. With an uncannily natural affinity for Henri, Bacon finds his way into the marrow of this tortured, downtrodden prisoner. In what could have too easily turned into a over-the-top "Look, Ma, I'm acting!" role, Bacon strikes a balance that is unique and rare. Unafraid of any aspect of Henri it becomes a performance nothing less than astonishing in its honesty.

The first 20 minutes presents us with the naked, filthy animal the system wishes to portray him as Henri. Yet, even here, with little more than a mad scene comprised of grunts, screams and incoherent mumblings about baseball, multiplication tables and The Lord's Prayer, Bacon makes Henri shine beneath the hair and grime introducing us to a pitiable sorrowful man not only wronged by the system, but utterly destroyed then forgotten by it. This is one of those rare performances where the work outshines the actor - I'd forgotten entirely I was even watching an actor.

It's a hard heart that will not be moved by Henri and Bacon should look back at this performance with nothing but pride. (The fact he was not nominated for an Oscar is astonishing as his performance.)

Christian Slater gives one of his best performances as well and Gary Oldman is, (predictably) wonderfully evil as is William H. Macy. The court room scenes fairly crackle, but ultimately the heart and soul of this movie is found in Kevin Bacon's Henri.

Everything else about this production shines - with 30 year old director, Marc Rocco at the helm, giving a strong vision to the entire proceeding. San Francisco looks marvelous and Christopher Young's soundtrack (eerily foreshadowing Kamen's score for "Band of Brothers") adds the final overwhelming touch.

Not to be missed.

...of the trial the ultimately put Alcatraz out of commision. Kevin Bacon gives one of his finest roles as a man who has spent three torturous years in solitary confinement on Alcatraz, let out for exercise for a half hour per year and viciously tortured and beaten by the Warren.

All of the acting in the movie is good, and the drama and suspense building is masterful. During the movie, you can really feel for and empathize with the characters, and even though its not a cool jail movie like Shawshank Redemption, it is every bit as good, especially in that it is a true story.

This is also an incredibly hard movie to watch at times. When the guy being slashed with a razor, or digging a spoon into a guys throat, or even just sobbing pitifully because his organ isn't working right after three years of malnutritioned hell, this movie has the capability of leaving you wincing in your seat.

This is not a movie to sit back, relax and enjoy, but rather one which you should watch and learn from.

The performances in this film are gripping. I actually believed in the plight of Henri Young, portrayed by Kevin Bacon. I wanted to be as good a Public Defender (This is what I do for a living) as Christian Slater portrayed in the film (oddly, the character's last name he uses is one of the real-life escapees). The judge, played by R. Lee Ermey, actually reminds of some of the judges I have been in front of - his iron disipline is that convincing. Then, to my shock, I found out that the truth had been stretched beyond all recognition.

The movie itself deserves at least four stars for the performances, particularly by Bacon, who should have been at least nominated for an Oscar for this film. The DVD must have been made at the beginning of DVD technology. If a director's cut DVD is complete with interviews, historical perspectives (why did the jury do what it did, anyway? I don't believe the Federal Board of Prisons and its smear job of Henri Young any more than I believe the version proffered by the director of this film) and the like then I will certainly buy it. Until then, I recommend that you rent this film, or buy a used copy.

Having just come off this year's Oscars, one need look no further than MURDER IN THE FIRST to see how the awards are merely an extravagant popularity contest that more often than not misses truly outstanding performances. Kevin Bacon's performance in this powerful film is tremendous and more than worthy of just a nomination, but a winner. Kevin brilliantly captures the person who is Henri Young. Physically, emotionally, Bacon brings a rare depth to a complex and wrongly treated person. Christian Slater, who I have long considered an average performer, also shines in this role as David, the public defender who fights to show the real villain - Alcatraz itself. Gary Oldman is superb as the assistant warden to whom cruelty and inhumanity is as natural as drinking water. Embeth Davidtz, William H. Macy, Kyra Sedgwick (as a hooker who tries to "service" Henri) and even the hammy F. Lee Ermey provide excellent support. To those reviewers who claimed the movie was phoney, poo poo on you. I found myself riveted to the screen and Bacon's performance alone should earn the movie five stars!

Based on true-life events, "Murder In The First" premiered in U.S. movie theaters in January 1995 and stars Kevin Bacon as Henri Young, a 28-year-old man who (as depicted in the film) stole five dollars and ended up doing 3-plus years in the solitary "dungeons" of Alcatraz prison in San Francisco in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

Upon looking up some information on the Internet regarding the "real" Henri Young, it seems that the filmmakers of this finely-crafted and well-shot Warner Brothers' drama did, indeed, dish up a liberal dose of "dramatic license" regarding the true events in Mr. Young's life. But, I suppose, this is to be expected from a Hollywood story depicting real-life people and events.

One thing that's been fictionalized for the movie is the brief scene when we find out that Young died while still behind Alcatraz bars. It's never fully explained in the film just exactly HOW Young died while still in prison. I think this should have been more thoroughly spelled out in the movie (even from a "fictionalized" point-of-view).

Evidently, according to info I can gather, Young did NOT die while in prison, and, in fact, might still be alive to this day. Young disappeared after being paroled from a Washington State prison in 1972, after serving additional prison time for another murder. (Sounds like another "D.B. Cooper" type of saga.)

"Artistic filmmaking license" notwithstanding, "Murder In The First" is an excellent piece of motion-picture entertainment, IMO. Bacon is just terrific in his role as the beaten, nearly-savage Young, who was confined to the pitch-black solitary confinement area of Alcatraz for more than 1,000 days before finally being released from the "dungeon".

Gary Oldman and Christian Slater also display their considerable acting chops in this film, along with R. Lee Ermey, who plays the Judge at Young's murder trial. You'll want to slap Ermey silly after a few scenes as the obnoxious "Judge Clawson" here. He's quite effective and humorous (although not altogether believable) as the rather overbearing chief court official.

This film has a classy style to it, with many interesting camera angles and camera movements employed by the movie's brain trust, headed by Director Marc Rocco. I particularly liked the way Rocco moves the camera in circles during the first scene featuring Slater and Bacon, with the camera moving non-stop as it circles completely around Bacon's/(Young's) jail cell. An effective way to present this scene, rather than just "planting" two cameras in the cell and cutting between still shots of the two actors.

This DVD version of "Murder In The First" offers up a dual-sided disc, with a Full-Frame (1.33:1) version on one side, and a nice, crisp-looking Anamorphically-enhanced Widescreen (1.85:1) version on the other side. Colors look rich and well-rendered here, IMO, with many scenes exuding a deliberately-grainier "1940's" look and feel to them.

The sound gets good marks here too. It's not a full-blooded 5.1-channel track utilized for this DVD, but the Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround Stereo soundtrack fills the speakers very nicely nonetheless. There's a good musical score too.

More about this DVD ....................

>> Extra Bonus Material -- None at all.
>> Chapter List? -- Yes; located inside the "Snapper" DVD case (38 total chapter stops included).
>> Languages -- English and French (both in DD 2.0 Surround).
>> Subtitles -- English and French.
>> Region Encoding -- "Region 1".
>> MPAA Rating -- R.

Parting Thoughts ....... 1995's "Murder In The First" is a Grade-A motion picture, serving nicely as a good character study of one Mr. Henri Young, and at the same time doubling as a dandy "courtroom drama", too. A most-worthy 122-minute experience.

If you like prison films, as I do, you would be attracted to the
filming of this one in Alcatraz.

That's the sole virtue of this film.

The rest is an assemblage of Central Casting clichés about the Big
House, the System, the supposedly semi-innocent ragamuffins wrongly
branded dangerous criminals who inhabited Alcatraz.

They depict Henri Young as the victim of an economically unjust America who
had to feed his sister by stealing a few bucks from a post office -
gorcery store. So he didn't really belong in Federal prison but for the
technicality. But even a cursory web search reveals Henri Young was a killer
and a bank robber before Alcatraz. And a constant prison troublemaker, hence his
assignment to the toughest of prisons.

The film reeks of the theme: We are really brutalizing decent people
with our horrible prison system. They would flower as good human beings
if we just sent a psychiatric social worker, or similarly minded public
defender, as here, into each cell to uncover their horrible traumas
from the wrongs heaped upon them.

So we are treated to the Quasimoto-like catatonic subject being lured
out of his foaming at the mouth animal state by a humanist "Miracle
Worker" type, armed with a few baseball scores. Time to liberate all
the criminally mentally ill with such simplistic therapy, you would
think.

If you weren't better informed.

Check out the real biographies and theories behind the Hollywood lie
machine and you will be better informed why it is going into the
financial diaper pail now that it has to contend with a more literate,
internet-informed fan base.

Kevin Bacon is quite excellent as Henry Young. He does not slip much in his portrayal of an emotionally disturbed inmate accused of murdering another inmate, McCain. Christian Slater's character, Stamphill, was not that well developed in the movie. Slater does try hard in the movie to breathe life into Stamphill. Young is Stamphill's first murder case and he is very inexperienced. He starts out as a jittery young defender but begins baking into a star attorney very quickly to undertake Alcatraz and its nest of hardliners. He believes in fighting for justice and introduces the idea of "crimes against humanity" in a 1930s court room. I did a look up on the Web about Young's time at Alcatraz only to find that the movie did not portray the actual Young. The movie character, Young bore little resemblance to the actual person. It is a highly fictionalized drama about an Alcatraz inmate who was not the "innocent" orphan abused by a prison system that was depicted in the movie. The actual Young was sent to Alcatraz for armed robbery (third offense) and for murdering a man. Stamphill in reality was not an attorney but was one of the prisoners who tried to escape with Young. Young had premeditated McCain's murder and stabbed him in the gut with a knife. All in all, apart from the deviation from the truth and Hollywood's romanticization of an Alcatraz inmate's life, this movie is quite well made and will keep you interested from the beginning through the end.

Alcatraz was norotious in its day for being an island prison off the coast of San Francisco Bay. A man who spends a year in solitary confinment goes mad enough to kill a fellow inmate. The sad thing is that the convict was a mere petty thief whose nature only hardened when he was sentenced to imprisonment. Christian Slater plays an ambitious public defender in San Francisco who fights for his client in that Matlock kind of way. One of the best scenes in this film are all the shots of San Francisco which create the atmosphere of the times.

I don't have to think twice in agreeing that Oscar Committee closed its eyes in the year this movie was released.
One of the very best movies I have ever seen that fall in the likes of The Green Mile and the Shawshank Redemption.
Kevin Bacon was outstanding and so was Christian Slater.
The picturization of the brutality was sometimes disturbing, but yet moving.
Definitely, this movie will be counted as a Masterpiece in Kevin Bacon's Filmography.
This is what I call Asbolute MAGIC.

Oh well, but yet here is another underrated movie with great acting, a sad true story, and no appreciation. This movie MURDER IN THE FIRST is alot like midnight express, in both true stories, both men were charged for something not very serious. It's an issue that has never been corrected. I know how messed up systems can be, and i'm not saying let the petty criminals all go, but even if they do break the law over something small, why give them such a harsh sentence? It makes me sick that these guys are in prison for 10-15 years for stealing pencils, and 5 bucks, and carrying marajauina. And yet the rapists and child molesters and murderers get 3-5 years. It makes no sense! Both men in both movies had breakdowns while in prison. Who wouldnt, so they both attack an inmate, it's like hello wake up. When you have a breakdown whatever you do you are so from reality and not enough people understand the mental effect prison can have on your mental health. It's the worst punishment of all. I'm against over-sentencing on non violent criminals. People who harm people, children, and animals, people who are a real threat to society should be locked up for 10-15 years, not peopple like the guy in this story who stole money for his hungry sister, and just because of the building being federal AND no longer a convenient store is ludacrous and absurd. And these sadistic arrogant SOB's that call themselves wardens shouldnt even be in charge of the prisons if they are going to torture and cut people's ankles open. They shouldnt get away with that. There's no excuse for that. This movie is a sad reality that if you put power into the wrong hands, they'll do horrible things. Much like the SOB warden in SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION another excellent film. Probably the best because i like the ending. Well both endings are similar in midnight express and shawshank redemption. But murder in the first is sad because kevin bacon dies. I'm not sure i believe he got the justice he deserved. Good thing all these evil bastards have a nice roasting hell to look forward to after their life of haneous acts towards innocent people IS OVER.