To entertain or to inform? Aristotle's Six Parts of Drama would answer with, to make one think. Ask me, and you'll get, to wrap the audience up tightly with a good story, well told. My wife would be the entertainment voter. I think we're all right.Richard Brooks' film version of the Truman Capote book isn't by any stretch of the word, entertaining. That leaves us with wrapping up the viewer with a thought-provoking story. I remember seeing bits and pieces of In Cold Blood as a teen when it was shown on CBS. I couldn't get the idea through my head why two stupid criminals would slaughter a family for any reason that made sense. I knew I wasn't getting the point, even though I had made it past the concrete- operational period in my intellectual development. My life experiences hadn't told me about the random barbarism humans could inflict on each other. I was blessedly innocent, even though I understood why a bunch of soldiers had decimated a couple of villages in Vietnam in 1968 (venting their frustration on less-than-humans) and why four kids got gunned down at Kent State (weekend warriors who panicked). But butchering four innocents in a farm house, just for a couple bucks, simply didn't add up. To be honest, it still doesn't.Jump forward to seeing Brooks' The Professionals in a theatre during the winter of 1975 (with the premiere of his Bite the Bullet), and the scene, where Jack Palance's banditos systematically execute dozens of Mexican soldiers, left me wondering why, why do such a monstrous thing?I remember sitting there in that theatre and figuring it out, getting the answer to my question. Why My Lai? Why the Clutters? Why this or that massacre?Convenience. Lives are expendable for expedience' sake. And that is why Aristotle would understand In Cold Blood. I understand the story. My wife would too, but she would be so sickened by the subject and so perturbed by the idea of not being entertained by a medium that is supposed to entertain, that I envy her. She shields herself from Aristotle.When I saw ICB again, something like ten years ago, I was more knowledgeable about movie-making, more aware of the psychological screwiness of Dick and Perry, but I felt that same nausea I felt when I first saw the film.It still didn't make sense. Maybe it never will.

'In Cold Blood' is a film written and directed by Richard Brooks whose story is based on the non-fiction novel of the same name written by Truman Capote. The story involves two ex-convicts Perry Smith and Richard 'Dick' Hickock played by Robert Blake and Scott Wilson respectively. They hatch up a plan to rob the Clutters, a wealthy family in Kansas. But during the robbery they find that there is no safe filled with cash and in the heat of the moment they end up gruesomely murdering the entire family. The film follows them on the run as the police try their best to get to the bottom of the crime. Now I don't have much idea about the actual crime and the actual people involved with it. So this review will be solely based on my impression of these people from the film which in turn is based on Truman Capote's impression of the events.I loved how the film starts. The director intermixes the scenes involving Perry and Dick along with the scenes showing the Clutters in their home. This works and acts like a foreshadow for the inevitable brutality that is going to follow. I couldn't help but feel a bit heartbroken to see the scenes involving the Clutters already knowing at the back of my mind, their eventual fate. The director hints at the existing financial inequality in society. He underlines the fact that as long as the imbalance in society exists, crimes like this will go on forever and ever and no one can do anything about it. Families and people will continue to remain vulnerable to evil forces borne out of dissatisfaction. Another very important and interesting aspect of the film is the unpredictability of human nature. Richard Brooks does give you hints and indications as to what triggered the two convicts (Perry in particular) to do what they did by giving you some details of their past lives and their childhood, but in the end Brooks wants you to know that some crimes just take place out of nowhere without much explanation to support it. Human beings with unstable minds and unstable psyches can be capable of the ultimate form of evil. Interestingly, this aspect of the unpredictability of crime is also covered in Bennett Miller's 'Foxcatcher'. It's interesting because Bennett Miller is also the director of 'Capote', the film which follows Truman Capote in his quest to acquire more and more information on this murder of the Clutters while he was working on his book 'In Cold Blood' which serves as the source material for the script of this film.I thought the middle act of the film was a bit uninteresting. It had nothing to do with the pace, it just involved scenes that didn't match the quality of the rest of the film. The procedural element of the film is the only thing of the narrative that I wasn't a big fan of and this is what fills up the middle act. The acting is solid from everyone involved, with bits of over acting in some scenes which is expected as we were still in the 60s and over the top acting had still not completely left Hollywood. The direction and screenplay is brilliant. The recreation of the crime scenes was absolutely brilliant. There are some jump-cuts from one scene to another and the transition was seamless. The last 30 minutes of the film is directed meticulously. The music by Quincy Jones basically revolves around elements of jazz and blues. The music in the film is beautiful to listen to on its own, but at times I found it to be a bit jarring and inappropriate in certain scenes and at times a bit too loud. 'In Cold Blood' isn't a perfect film, but it is certainly a good account of a gruesome crime. It is well directed, it has elements of both procedural films as well as road films. It just shows that no matter who you are or what you do, you are always vulnerable. The American Dream is ideal, but it is not beyond the grasps of evil forces.

... at least for me, because by the end of the movie, I really, really wanted Dick and Perry to die. It wasn't a feeling of revenge. I didn't care if they suffered, in fact it is too bad lethal injection wasn't around before it was, because I'm sure a botched hanging could be an awful way to go. I just had a feeling that the earth was a safer place without these two guys in it. The movie did a great job of humanizing two cold blooded killers in a way that few films had done before. It showed their backgrounds, it showed that Dick was the leader and definitely the more dangerous of the two. He didn't really care that he killed four total strangers, and he was even somewhat apathetic about his own death. Perry probably would have had none of this killing business and just gone on to re-offend and be re-incarcerated for less violent offenses the rest of his life, AS LONG AS he didn't meet up with a stronger more forceful personality such as Dick Hickock, who called Perry on his fantastic tales of untrue crime. Before DNA and the many advances in forensics since 1959, Alvin Dewey has a huge task on his hands. Who would kill four likable people like the Clutters with seemingly no motive? Today the answer is - almost anybody. In 1959 this killing made national news because of its random senseless nature and its rural locale where crime was very low. John Forsythe was mainly an actor on television his entire career, but he was outstanding as the lead investigator in this crime. He keeps the police procedural part of this film quite interesting with his methodical sensible approach.The last part of the film shows Dick and Perry on death row for five years. If you didn't see the first part of this film you'd think these guys were artists, poets, philosophers. That's just because they are being told when to get up, when to go to bed, when to eat, etc. Even the most hardened of criminals will seem OK if you take all of their decisions away from them, and that's how parole boards get fooled, which is something society has learned the hard way over the last 50 years. Or have we? I watch this film and I can't help but think about the Carr brothers. Next to them Dick and Perry look like Rotarians. There are so many similarities. Both killed in Kansas, both picked houses occupied with complete strangers where they thought there was lots of cash, both killed the household dog - the Carrs as a parting shot after executing four people after hours of ritualistic sexual torture and robbery - Dick and Perry killed the Clutter's German Shepherd because they weren't going to be able to get near the Clutters without doing so. Yet the Carr brothers remain alive 15 years after the crime with their death sentence being overturned by the gutless Kansas Supreme Court. Google "Wichita Massacre" to see what I'm talking about.Finally this film teaches how not to react to a home invasion, a term that would not exist for another 35 years after the Clutters were killed. If somebody breaks into your house BECAUSE you are there, you can assume they are after much more than your stuff. Your first duty is ESCAPE because then the criminals realize the clock is ticking, especially in the age of cell phones and 911. Resist with lethal force if you can, escape when you can. If the Clutters had all scattered in four different directions rather than allowing themselves to be tied up to protect the other family members it is likely that at least Perry would have panicked and that would have been the end of it.Most chilling scene to me - Nancy Clutter winding her alarm clock before she goes to bed as a train whistles - the same whistle is heard by Dick and Perry as they slowly drive up to the Clutter home. Her killers and her own death were that close and she didn't have a clue. Highly recommended.

My feeling toward "In Cold Blood" echoes Vito Corleone's opening statement of the Five Families' meeting: "How did things ever get so far? It was so unfortunate, so unnecessary." Indeed, what can be more deplorable than four lives bought at such a cheap price as forty dollars? Six, if you dare to count the killers.Richard Brooks' "In Cold Blood" chronicles with a documentary-like precision the whole chain of events that lead to the infamous Clutter Massacre in November 1959. Two ex-convicts, Dick Hicock and Perry Smith, a charming con-man and a tortured Korean-War veteran, broke into the farm of a respectable God-fearing Kansas family and killed father, mother, daughter and son in the titular way, without any other motive than stealing ten thousands dollars hidden in a safe, some tip from Hicock's former cell-mate, as wrong as tragic. It sealed the Clutters' fate as the two young killers insisted on leaving no witness.The narrative strikes for its realistic depiction of all the unfortunate circumstances that made this crime possible. Not to diminish Brooks' merit but most the credit goes to the author of the original story of the same title, Truman Capote. Driven by what could be seen as morbid fascination, Capote approached in an unorthodox yet modern way a seemingly fait-divers story. And for reasons, although we see the two bodies swinging under a tight rope at the end, are we really that satisfied that Justice was done? Society takes its revenge but what a thin consolation after such a waste of lives, including the killers.Let's focus on the killers because that's where the intellectual challenge lies, and because the story primarily deals with them. There's no way to feel any sympathy for their actions, but the film intelligently allows us to channel our sentiments toward a more magnanimous perception. At one point, the journalist, who should've been identified as Capote (one of the film's minor flaws) makes the following diagnosis: the two men could never kill anyone, but together they formed a third personality capable to commit the irreparable. It shows that the two men could never kill alone. Hicock's eagerness to kill has the resonance of desperation and he later explains to the police officer (John Forsythe) that he counted on Smith to be the real 'trigger', since he already killed a man, but then Smith reveals that he never killed 'that guy in Vegas'. Some natural born killers! When they use a stolen checkbook, Hicock uses his charms and smooth talk for more benign crime while Smith seems to drown his soul into a constant depressed state. What a waste indeed, Hicock would've made one hell of a salesman, Smith, a tormented artist, but they lost their soul somewhere and had to vent their anger on the furthest thing to their existence: an ordinary, happy family. That poignant contrast is simply a waste making up for another waste. That's how it works and the way it fails. Interestingly, the film is from 1967, the year saw the release of the groundbreaking "Bonnie and Clyde", one of the New Hollywood landmarks that paved the way to a less Manichean approach to outlaws and more realistic take on violence. Yet Brooks wasn't a newcomer in Hollywood and his portrayal of violence is less explicit than in Penn's masterpiece. However, there's something extremely fresh in the shocking realism he uses, transcended by a haunting black-and-white photography, from no one less than Conrad Hall. And I don't think any scene shook me more in my life than the killing of the Clutter Family.The murder sequence is kept till the end to leave us time to analyze the killers before the killing and be in the opposite situation than the jurors. We're not there to play society role, but to understand what kind of mess and waste can lead to another. After the murder, the film's pace is faster as to show how fast things go. I was surprised that the film was listed in AFI's Top 10 Courtroom Dramas although the trial doesn't last longer than 10 minutes. The conclusion on the Death Row leaves us contemplating a system, whose own actors assess the uselessness. They're all disillusioned yet no one would deny that Justice must be done, not even the killers. Hicock respects the idea of revenge since that's what he tried to do all his life.There's no message, no preaching in "In Cold Blood", simply an invitation to understand why tragedies have and will always happen. And for its meticulous attention to detail, the film was shot in the same Clutter house and the actors Perry Blake and Scott Wilson bear uncanny resemblance with the actual killers, "In Cold Blood" is a cold and bold take on banal horror with strong sociological resonance. It's also one of the best pictures of the year, one that should've been nominated instead of the anachronistic "Dr. Doolittle". One criticism though, I'm less impressed now by what amazed me at the first viewing: the jazzy Quincy Jones score and the use of 'clever' transition cut, as they betrayed a too artsy approach to a rather austere subject.Ironically, the greatest looking shot of the film wasn't expected and worked as a tribute to the genius of Conrad Hall. The final monologue of Perry Smith relating his last happy memory as a prospector in Alaska with his father, with reflection of rain forming tears in his face is the epitaph of these souls who've lost the sparkle of humanity as a reaction to the hell they went through, and a premonition to the destiny of Robert Blake. Blake constantly refers to Bogart in "The Treasure of Sierra Madre" a movie where he starred, as if his reality served the fiction. How ironic that the fiction would serve his reality, as if he was doomed to carry a shadow of truth in all the roles he played.