A Murder of Crows (1999)

Best movie of this year hands down!

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

I found this movie to be delightfully original (although a few parts were predictable) and it became more interesting and suspenseful as the plot developed.Its strength was in the acting and originality, and its weakness was in the non-development or quick-development of some of the main characters, Tom Beranger and Carmen Argenziano's specifically.The movie seemed to be rushed near the end, and could have been better developed as the plot thickened.SPOILER: just a couple points. I felt that Cuba Gooding's character should have disguised himself after escaping the first time. And why was Tom Beranger at the house of Mark Pellinger?

Louisiana defense lawyer Lawson Russell (Cuba Gooding Jr.) deliberately causes a mistrial in the trial of Thurman Parks III (Eric Stoltz). He gets disbarred and wants to write a book better than John Grisham. After 13 months in the Florida Keys, he has done a lot of drinking as a fishing tour guide. He's hired by a strange old man named Marlow. Marlow dies and Lawson keeps his manuscript. Lawson claims the book as his own and it becomes a best seller. Thurman is acquitted. Police detective Clifford Dubose (Tom Berenger) is investigating the real murders of five lawyers that is exactly as written in the book. He hires his old colleague Elizabeth Pope as his defense lawyer.I really like the premise. Cuba doesn't necessarily play the everyman character. He's too brash and could be seen as bringing this on himself. Nevertheless, there is a hard-boiled sense to this mystery except for Marlow and the other false identities. The makeup jobs look bad. They look like Halloween costumes and make the movie look cheesy. Eric Stoltz sounds awful in a southern accent. I don't know if the accent is accurate. Hollywood kid Stoltz is not the guy to do the accent. The movie needs to bring on a better makeup artist and somebody else to take on Stoltz's character.

This movie catches you from the beginning and keeps you guessing all the way to the very end. I think this is one of Cuba Gooding's best movies. It is great! The movie keeps you guessing and on your toes throughout the entire movie. I think Tom Berenger and Eric Stoltz both outperform themselves. The acting and dramatics were very well blended. This movie has great artistic directing as well. The costume changes and make-up were quite believable. The dramatics were amazing. The way the movie evolved from the beginning and tied in at the end was excellent. Never saw it coming. I feel this is a very well rounded movie that anyone would enjoy.

***SPOILERS*** "A Murder of Crows" starts off interesting enough with New Orleans defense attorney Lawson Russell sitting in his home and just about to be assassinated by this guy dressed in a Devil costume on Fat Tuesday evening. Russell is told to get of the case he's presiding on that involves New Orleans defending blue-blood Truman Parks III. The mask man is told by Russell that if he refuses to defend Parks he can kiss his career in law good-by; this seemed to have caused the killer to change his mind in doing in Russell.Never the less Russell purposely tries to lose the case for his client Parks and is then disbarred from practicing law for life. Lawson Russell then goes to live in his late fathers home in Key West to start a new career as a writer and part time tourist guide. It's there that he meets this old eccentric Christopher Marlow who after having a ride with him on his boat gives his this manuscript "A Murder of Crows" to read and tell him later what he thinks of it. It must have been a very good story since Russell read in overnight and when he came back to Marlow's hotel room he finds out that he died the night before. Deciding to have the book "A Murder of Crows" published under his name it soon becomes an overnight best seller and Russell is all over the press as one of the most talented young writers in America. But the book is more then just a good novel what it's about, the murder of five prominent defense attorneys, is true and true enough for the police to suspect that Russell murdered them! In the fact that he knows things about the murders that only the killer who murdered them and the police who investigated the case knew.Cuba Goding Jr. as fugitive Lawson Russell was like a bouncing ball on the screen bouncing from New Orleans to Key West and back with the police in both those cities, and all points in-between, not being able to catch him. He seemed to be invisible where almost no one recognized him! Which is very improbable with him being wanted for five murders and having his picture in all the papers and on the TV news and also being the author of the biggest best seller in the country! Looking for the elusive Christopler Marlow Russell comes across a phone connection in New Orleans that somehow puts him, Marlow, there and in Key West Russell soon finds out that the man was a fraud and never existed! And that he, and his cohorts, somehow set up and framed Russell for the murders that Marlow wrote in his book. It would have been so easy for Russell to prove his innocence by proving that he wasn't in the places, that were all across the southern US, where the murders in the book "A Murder of Crows" were committed. Also how did Marlow know that Russell would later have burnt the manuscript, that would have proved Russell's innocence, that he gave him and later had it publish under his name implicating him in the murders? Tom Berenger as New Orleans Det. Clifford DuBose did his best to be over-the-top in his actions as a gong-ho type who liked to do things "His Way". So much so that he kept the FBI out of the loop and almost caused the case of the "dead defense attorneys" to go cold. And thus have the killer get away due to his selfish and unprofessional actions.The ending was just too much to take taking away any believability at all that the movie had left up until then with Russell ending up just like the clients of the five defense lawyers did in the book "A Murder of Crows" as well as Truman Parks III in real life.