Review: Murder in the First
Thursday, September 6th, 2007Murder in the First, based on a true story, tells the tale of Henry Young (Kevin Bacon) and his attorney (Christian Slater) as they expose the brutality of the Alcatraz prison, which led to reforms in the system. Henry was a petty thief (he stole $5, one time) who had the misfortune of landing at Alcatraz. Following an escape attempt, he was thrown in solitary confinement and brutally treated for three years. When he got out, his first act was to kill another inmate. Stamphill, his greenhorn attorney, argued that the brutality of the Associate Warden (Gary Oldman) and the prison system turned a non-violent man into a murderer.
The movie is excellent. Well acted (especially by Bacon), emotionally and philosophically engaging, and star studded, it really makes you think about the prison systems as they were, and makes you wonder how different they are today. It is a story of a difficult triumph against an oppressive, unbeatable system.
It’s a shame that most of it isn’t true.
This is based on a true story only in the broadest sense. Yes, Henry Young was in Alcatraz and in solitary for a long time, and yes he killed another inmate after getting out. Yes, his lawyer argued that the system turned him into a murderer and had his sentence reduced. But that’s about all the truth in it. His lawyer wasn’t even Stamphill (that was the name of another inmate), but rather Abrams. He was not non-violent before solitary.
According to A Brief History of Alcatraz Island:
In fact, the true story is that Young was a bank robber who had brutally taken a hostage on at least one occasion, and had committed murder in 1933 - some three years before being incarcerated at Alcatraz. Young was a difficult inmate who challenged and provoked fights with several of his fellow prisoners. Young and his accomplice Rufus McCain, who would eventually become his murder victim, had both spent nearly twenty-two months in solitary confinement for a failed escape that had resulted in the shooting death of the famous gangster Doc Barker.
Another website went to the trouble of posting a table of fact vs. fiction with over 30 points of discrepancy. Some of the more interesting were the facts that Young didn’t even die when the movie said he did, was not nearly so docile and scared, and that the central murder was completely wrong.
Though the facts in the movie were twisted horribly, it still works well as a movie. I’ve seen it at least three times, and certain scenes still get to me every time.
Four and a half stars.
Technorati Tags: Kevin Bacon, Gary Oldman, Christian Slater, Alcatraz, murder, legal system, history
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