“Infamous” is a disturbing tale of brutal murders, tragic lives and the thin line between empathy and compassion. It chronicles the love-fear relationship between Truman Capote, author of “In Cold Blood,” and Perry Smith, the serial-killer subject of his true-crime masterpiece. Unable to separate the roots of his obsession, Capote spends six tormented years growing closer to the man whose execution he’s counting on to round off the story. After all, Capote asks himself, “How can I finish my book before I know how it ends?”
But instead of portraying a darkly provocative experience so ripe for the picking, writer/director David McGrath seems more interested in laughs than tears. The movie fidgets from scene to scene, cramming cheerful music and punchy one-liners alongside heartless killers and vicious slayings — a disquieting effect.
In life, Capote was a manipulative socialite — enigmatic, charismatic and ultimately tragic. In last year’s Oscar-winning performance for the film “Capote,” Philip Seymour Hoffman portrayed Capote with charm, compassion and humility. In “Infamous”’ Toby Jones renders him instead as creepy, absurd and insincere. The awkwardness of Jones’ performance peaks when McGrath shows him arriving at a rural police station for the announcement of the quadruple murder wearing a fur coat and red scarf — then flirting with the chief while the cause of death is announced.
When mistakes like these are made in Hollywood, the directors blame the writers, and writers blame the directors. McGrath has no one to blame but himself (and accidental bad timing). The script is riddled with cringe-inducing dialogue and oozes overacting. Amid their most intimate moments, Truman and Perry exchange uncomfortable lines more palatable in romance comedies than true-crime dramas. “You complete me” is a hard line for any actor to sell behind the bars of a 10-by-10 cell on death row.
Jones may be an obscure and disquieting lead, but the rest of the cast is filled with familiar faces. Jeff Daniels, Sandra Bullock and Sigourney Weaver all lend their names, sure to help fill a few seats, but their talents go unused. While doing research for his book, Capote conducted hundreds of interviews; McGrath takes an interesting stab at emulating that process by injecting interviews of his own throughout the film, but with limited success. The audience is spoon-fed commentary before cardboard cityscapes that are probably on loan from the “Late Show with David Letterman,” and the film’s pace never recovers from these flimsy interjections. They serve more to tell the audience in explicit terms what McGrath seems unable or unwilling to tell through the story itself.
If you’ve already seen “Capote” but are hungry for more, pick up Capote’s book “In Cold Blood” or Gerald Clarke’s biography of the same name.
