HURRICANE

 

FOUR STARS - Inspiring

The Hurricane (Special Edition) (2000) List Price: $14.98 Our Price: $12.99 You Save: $1.99 (13%)

 

 

       Nothing touches our hearts more than the triumph of justice over evil.  And nothing can be more painful than the innocent suffering for the sins of others.  Based on his own real life story, Rubin Carter tells a remarkable andtriumphant tale of a life redeemed by the love and compassion of a youngboy.

       Rubin "Hurricane" Carter (Denzel Washington) was a contender for the Middle Weight Boxing Title in the mid-1960's.  A man of considerable talent, Rubin lived the life of a rising star in the African-American community.  But, in the 1960's, he also lived under the shadow of intense racial prejudice, and his popularity was an anathema to some members of the police establishment.

       At the height of his rising career, an angry and vicious police detective named Vincent Della Pesca (Dan Hedaya) who had known Rubin all of his life, decides to frame him and finger him for a triple murder that occurs in his neighborhood.  Carter is convicted on flimsy evidence and sentenced to three life terms.  For all intents and purposes, an innocent man is sent to prison for the sins of a evil man.

       The horrors of prison life and vividly displayed.  The mental shutdown that every prisoner must choose is his only path to psychological survival. Rejecting his wife and friends, Rubin finds that every day requires numbing himself from feelings in order to survive.  The reality of the psychological disintegration that one experiences in prison is a stark contrast to any notion of "rehabilitation."

       As Rubin explains, "English became my second language;  my first was the language of hate."  And yet, through it all, Rubin exercised his mind through writing his history and pleading his cause of justice blinded by racism.  The end result was the publishing of his autobiography, The 16th Round.  With his story in print, Rubin hoped for a chance for a rehearing of his case.  But, through numerous appeals, his case was rejected time after time. Two decades of his life had now come and gone while he rotted in jail for acrime he did not commit.

       If anything changed between the 1960's and the 1980's, it would be the remarkable drive within the American culture to stop the tide of institutional racism.  If this gave anyone a chance to survive blatant racism, it would be a young boy named Lesra Martin (Vicellous Reon Shannon).  Having grown up in the same kind of poverty as Rubin, Lesra was given a chance to succeed through the tutoring of three Canadian mentors.  Lisa Peters (Deborah Unger), and her housemates Sam Chadon (Live Schreiber) and Terry Swinton (John Hannal) took this young teenager into their home for a year to tutor him in preparation for high school graduation.  

       As a reading assignment, Lesra read the story of Rubin "Hurricane" Carter. Inspired by Carter's courage, Lesra begins to write letters to Rubin to  troduce himself and give him words of hope.  s tutors, like most of us, were reluctant to take Rubin's story on face value.  After all, "everyone in prison says that they are innocent."  How do you give encouragement to a young mind without calling him naïve?

       Wth the reluctant help of his tutors, Lesra makes the journey to Rubin's prison to pay him a visit.  This simple act of compassion is now a seed planted.  th his emotional state at risk, this simple act by a young boy forces Rubin to have to make the same emotional choice he has had to make before. Will he allow himself to hope, or must he shut down in order to survive? Rubin chooses the later course.  He asks Lesra to never come back to visit him.  t with a childlike sense of innocence, Lesra pleads with everyone that Rubin will die unless his sense of hope is reinstated.  And it is through this path led by a young African American boy that was about the same age that Rubin was when he was a rising star, that Rubin's path to freedom is established.

       ith the strong support of his adopted family, and the volunteer help of Rubin's former lawyers, Lesra appeals Rubin's case to a Federal Court to examine the racially motivated actions of the police a quarter of a century earlier.  In a moving courtroom scene, Federal Judge H. Lee Sorokin (Rod Steiger) makes a decision which changes the course of Rubin's life.

       ow many other Rubin's are on death row?  Will anyone visit them while in prison?  In this case, the compassion of one young boy made all the difference.  In the end, Rubin is born anew, and in thanksgiving he tells Lesra, "hate put me in this place, but love burst me out."   Redemption is fulfilled.

       oday, the real Rubin Carter is involved in a prison fellowship program and Lesra Martin is an attorney helping the poor..

 

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