4. The Hurricane (Norman Jewison, 1999)
The Subject Rubin Carter, a boxer convicted of a triple murder.
The Story (According To The Film) Promising middleweight boxer Rubin Hurricane Carter is arrested for the murder of three New Jersey bar patrons and spends twenty years in prison as a result of the testimony of another suspect, despite proclaiming his innocence. Three Canadian activists believe that he has been wrongly imprisoned and seek to have his case re-examined by the authorities, eventually securing his release when it is ruled that his imprisonment was a result of racism and constitutional violations.
The Lies Heavily criticised for a number of factual inaccuracies despite the high quality of Denzel Washingtons performance, the films falsities include: The depiction of Carter losing a fight to Joey Giardello solely because of racist judges. In reality, Giardello dominated the fight and was barely touched by Carter over the fifteen round distance. The implication that Carter was in fact innocent of his crimes. In his youth, hed been arrested for both armed robbery and assault, whilst during his trial he failed a lie detector test, witnesses who had provided alibis for him admitted that they had lied and two convictions, backed by significant volumes of evidence, had to be thrown out because of administrative errors by the prosecution team. Whether or not he killed the three men is still open to debate, but it would seem that he did.