The lowest point of the uneven True Story occurs when Jill Barker (Felicity Jones) pays an impromptu prison visit to accused murderer Christian Longo (James Franco). Longo is charged with unceremoniously offing his wife and three kids and stuffing their bodies in suitcases, which he then threw over a bridge. He also curiously impersonated Jones’s fallen journalist boyfriend, Mike Finkel, during his getaway in Mexico. Then, if you can believe it, Longo lured Finkel into visiting him in jail, which led to multiple conversations and eventual plans for Finkel to unleash a book on Longo’s plight.
Apparently, the scene where Barker visits Longo is entirely fabricated, with no mention of it in Finkel’s memoir, also entitled True Story. Her character is presumably raised into a more prominent sphere with the intention of alerting the viewer to a lack of satisfying emotional interaction between her and Finkel. She seeks an answer to the question of the real reason for his reaching out to Longo.
She’s not alone in her concerns. True Story cries out for a deeper portrayal of the inner life and concerns of Finkel, and for that matter, Longo, than are presented here. While the film is intermittently fascinating, it is more often frustrating.
Leaving aside the bigger question of why we should care about either of these men in the first place, attempts to figure out just why Finkel is moving in the direction he is, often go unsatisfied. The journalistic misrepresentation that got him booted from the New York Times was an apparent one-time sin rather than a serial pattern such as that of Jayson Blair or Stephen Glass. Thus one motive that might be considered is that which he declares to his wife: a scoop of the magnitude of Longo actually being innocent would be a big enough story to exonerate Finkel’s seemingly incontrovertible disgraced reputation. But is is hard to be sure other motivations might not be at work.
Finkel may be enamored with the idea of the two men obviously sharing a common public identity that belies who they really are. Or he may be more or less hypnotized by Longo’s commanding calm certitude. Does Finkel wish to exploit Longo? It’s a notion not out of line with his previous transgression where he created a false composite character for a NY Times Magazine cover story on slavery in present-day Africa. Director Rupert Goold and screenwriters Goold and Michael Kajganich either don’t have a point of view or they jointly wish to throw every possible theory against the wall and have the viewer choose. Hill does a well enough job given the circumstance. Franco shines. His portrays of Longo–erratically coherent and bracingly alluring–camouflages an inner emptiness.
So it’s easy to go for the idea that Finkel was simply vulnerable and Longo took him for a ride. Then he woke up to reality and, ironically, his book, thought to be dead, somehow still comes to publication. Finally Gold resorts to magical realism to somewhat let Finkel off the hook. OK, but if we haven’t built up empathy for him because we never got to know his underlying character, we leave the film essentially not caring.