Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 1999

The Contenders:

Kevin Spacey: American Beauty (winner)
Denzel Washington: The Hurricane
Russell Crowe: The Insider
Richard Farnsworth: The Straight Story
Sean Penn: Sweet and Lowdown

The Sixteenth Round

Film: The Hurricane
Format: Showtime on big ol’ television.

As the list of Oscar movies I still have to get through starts to wind down, I realize there are movies I’ve avoided for a bunch of different reasons. Length for a few, lack of interest for others. With The Hurricane, I’ve stayed away for a very different reason. I remember when the movie was released, and while I also remember that Denzel Washington’s performance was widely praised, What I also recall was that the biggest knock against the film was that it was economical with sticking with the actual facts.

So let’s look at the film first, then the history. The Hurricane tells the story of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter (Denzel Washington), an up-and-coming middleweight boxer convicted of three murders in Patterson, NJ during the Civil Rights Era. Carter spent nearly 20 years in prison for crimes that both he and the film say he didn’t commit. The timeline of the film naturally goes back and forth. We’ll get some of Carter’s fights and some of his youth as well as a great deal of his time in prison.