'Hurricane' dealing with storm of controversy

Denzel Washington movie said to be inaccurate

From Cynthia Tornquist
CNN Entertainment News Correspondent

Denzel Washington in a scene from 'The Hurricane'

February 7, 2000
Web posted at: 4:25 p.m. EST (2125 GMT)

(CNN) -- Denzel Washington's new movie, "The Hurricane," has been garnering acclaim for his performance. Washington recently won a Golden Globe for best dramatic actor for the role.

But the film also has been taking a beating from some people who say "The Hurricane" is inaccurate.

Lewis Steel is one of them. Along with two other attorneys, Steel spent years fighting to free middleweight boxing contender Rubin "Hurricane" Carter and his co-defendant, John Artis, after their conviction for a 1966 murder in Paterson, New Jersey. The movie is based on that story.

But Steel says it strays from the truth. In a recent issue of The Nation, Steel praised Washington's portrayal of Carter. But he says, "'The Hurricane' buries the truth in a false Hollywood concoction that blames Rubin's wrongful conviction on one rogue cop who is eventually undone by a group of outside heroes.

"The guts of what occurred was not a single cop after Rubin and John but a police force, a prosecutorial office and a whole list of state court judges who refused to intervene and bring this terrible racial prosecution to an end," Steel says.

He's not the film's only critic. New York Times writer Selwyn Raab accuses the filmmakers of exaggerating the role of a group of Canadians in the investigation that led to Carter's 1985 release.

Raab writes: "They are depicted as demon sleuths who uncover vital evidence. ... These incidents are fairy tales."

The filmmakers defend their movie

The filmmakers, however, defend their version.

"We didn't make up a story and lie to people," says Armyan Bernstein, the producer and co-writer of the film. "What we did was we took literary license to tell the themes as best we could."

Steel says that's not right, no matter how you sell it.

"When you take this story and turn it into a soap opera, rather than get to the serious material encompassed in the story, you do us all a disservice," Steel says.

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'The Hurricane'

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