In Cold Blood [HD]

Chilling Adaptation of Capote's Controversial Novel
When Truman Capote published his 1966 novel IN COLD BLOOD--a story based on the actual 1959 murder of wealthy Kansas farmer Herbert Clutter and his family--he single-handedly established a new type of printed literature. Factual accounts of real-world crime had made it into print before, of course, but in writing HIS book, Capote combined in-depth journalistic research with the techniques of fiction writing, openly folding the facts of the case into invented dialogue and, for aesthetic purposes, sometimes combining the case's less important actors into single fictional characters. Capote himself referred to IN COLD BLOOD as a "non-fiction novel," and this approach to retelling real-life crimes in a pulp-like literary format would eventually evolve into the true-crime genre that is popular today.

Maverick filmmaker Richard Brooks saw the potential of Capote's work as a basis for an aesthetically literate and thematically powerful film and subsequently adapted it for the screen...

Good adaptation of a great book
Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" was hailed as a "non-fiction novel"; Richard Brooks' film adaptation is a semi-documentary film. Brooks doesn't sensationalize, however; the blood and gore of four horrible murders is kept to a bare minimum. We hear the gunshots but we don't see the carnage, and we don't need to; the power of suggestion does it all. Brooks keeps the movie strictly on track, from the night of the murder to the discovery of the crime the next morning; the killers' flight across country and the investigation by the detectives of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation which solved the crime and brought the perpetrators to justice.

The actors are all competent in their roles and there are some very good performances indeed in the supporting parts. But the outstanding performance in this film is Robert Blake as Perry Smith, and to a lesser extent, Scott Wilson as Dick Hickock. Blake's haunted expression as he says, right before his hanging, "I'd like to apologize. But who...

Perhaps the Most Indelible Crime Film Ever Made
Once seen, you will never forget Richard Brooks' haunting adaptation of In Cold Blood. A truer or more shocking story of American crime & punishment has never been told so well, and the film will leave you with more questions than answers. Yet, in terms of the filmmaking, everything works with the absolute precision of superlative craft. Robert Blake and Scott Wilson are unforgettable in the lead roles, each essaying a different kind of loser with brutish physicality and natural dialogue. The inventive jazz score by Quincy Jones is one of the strangest, and perhaps most appropriate, soundtracks ever created for an American studio film. And, most of all, the dazzling B&W cinematography of Conrad Hall is about the best I've ever seen. Images stick with you for days after the final credits roll-- a police cruiser screaming through the desolate Kansas prairie on a bright, cold morning; a cigarette lit in absolute darkness, suddenly revealing the twisted outline of a...

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