A Murder of Crows - Diabolical Temptation

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Movie
German title A Murder of Crows - Diabolical Temptation
Original title A Murder of Crows
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1999
length 96 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Rowdy Herrington
script Rowdy Herrington
production Ashok Amritraj
Cuba Gooding Jr.
Elie Samaha
music Steve Porcaro
camera Robert Primes
cut Harry B. Miller III
occupation

A Murder of Crows is a 1999 thriller starring Cuba Gooding Jr. and Tom Berenger .

action

Attorney Lawson Russell (Cuba Gooding Jr.) has moral concerns about representing a wealthy client who has been charged with a brutal murder. After his client casually admitted his guilt shortly before the initially positive outcome of the trial, Lawson Russel lets himself be carried away to expose him to the jury as a perpetrator. He was then removed from the courtroom and shortly afterwards his legal license was withdrawn for treason. The murderer, in turn, is acquitted for procedural errors. Lawson Russel leaves it all behind and moves to Key West, Florida, to write a novel. Most of the time he works on his little boat to teach tourists how to fish, but with just as little success as he does when writing novels.

Apparently by chance, he finally meets an old man who calls himself Christopher Marlowe and, after he has gone fishing with him on the sea, gives him the manuscript of an unpublished novel he has written during a visit so that he can also see it from the point of view of a lawyer judge. The manuscript entitled "A Murder of Crows" describes the carefully planned and executed murders of five attorneys who were killed in black robes that make them look like crows and appear in as many numbers as these birds through their immoral activities had helped to acquitt their guilty clients through scandalous court judgments. However, the author of the manuscript dies unexpectedly the next day, and former lawyer Russel keeps the manuscript, which he is immediately enthusiastic about. Unfortunately, he burns the original manuscript so that he cannot later prove that he is not the actual author.

Russell, meanwhile, publishes the novel as his own work, and it soon becomes a bestseller, so that financially, too, things develop very positively for Russell. However, when Clifford Dubose, a homicide detective in New Orleans, received a copy of the book anonymously by mail and began to research the information highlighted by the sender, it soon turned out that the detailed descriptions had previously been accidents and suicides disguised murders had actually taken place. Certain facts in the novel could only have been known to the real murderer and the police. Russel, who continues to pretend to be the author, is then suspected of these murders. However, he manages to evade arrest. Now he has no choice but to find the real murderer in order to be able to prove his innocence.

In the course of his own investigations, always on the run from the police and only supported by his former colleague Elizabeth Pope (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) from his law firm, he finally tracks down the theater scholar and drama teacher Arthur Corvus, who lost his wife and child years ago in a hit-and-run accident. The guilty party was found at the time, but was acquitted due to procedural errors.

Russell then breaks into Corvus' house and finds various disguises and tools that prove the man's culprit. He also quickly realizes that, with the help of his acting training, he had played the role of several suspicious characters he had met repeatedly before, in particular the old man who had given him the manuscript and who allegedly died shortly afterwards, des Policemen in front of his pension who had informed him about this death and a rocker who had asked for a personal dedication in the book. It quickly becomes clear that the perpetrator is apparently targeting Russell himself, above all to punish him like the others for his past amoral arrogance. One shot even shows Corvus at the beginning of the film, masked lurking behind the window of Russell's villa during the Mardi Gras to kill him, but abandons it when he overhears his phone call with the judge, in which Russell tells him, he would resign his mandate because he was no longer convinced of the innocence of the accused.

Russell, who has meanwhile also recognized the motive for the murders - Corvus' desperation over the unpunished death of his wife and child - is now breaking into the perpetrator's villa for the second time to arrest him, but is already expected by Corvus, who shoots the investigating police officer Clifford Dubose (Tom Berenger), who suddenly appeared, because he had overheard his confession. Russell, whom Corvus initially also wants to blame for this murder, finally succeeds in overpowering and killing him. He then faces the police, who have since arrived, and you see him in the same shot as at the beginning of the film as a prisoner in a cell, where he begins to tell the whole story. In court he is finally acquitted on all counts of the allegations of murder and vigilante justice.

Reviews

“Despite some inconsistencies in the story, it's director and screenwriter Herrington - especially thanks to the excellent cast around Oscar winner Cuba Gooding Jr. - succeeded in staging a good thriller in the style of film noir . Herrington had film art in mind, but he didn't want to do without some sex scenes to increase the audience's interest. "

- prism

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ A Murder of Crows - Diabolische Temptation , prisma.de