This docudrama recreates a real life crime in which an entire family was brutally murdered by wandering gunmen. While on the run, the gunmen face not only the realities of their terrible crime but also their own earthly impermanence.
In contrast to Capote, whose obsessive documentation of the pair's every act betrays his fear than he (and his readers) could well do something similar, Brooks explains and sympathises away their act as being unique to them.
Blake and Wilson give wonderfully natural performances: eerie in their casual attitude to murder but endearing in their open natures. In Cold Blood doesn't judge them but doesn't excuse them.
It's both a "true crime" movie and a poetic account of two young men who, by committing an act of unspeakable brutality, unleash the furies against themselves.
Writer-director Richard Brooks' detached style allows for a non-exploitative presentation, and the contributions by cinematographer Conrad Hall and composer Quincy Jones are first-rate.
Truman Capote's non-fiction masterwork gets the film noir treatment from director Richard Brooks, with a slow dissection of "a crime that shocked a nation."
Chief among the film's distinctions are the beautiful gloom of Conrad Hall's monochromatic cinematography... There are the fearless, wonderfully contrasting performances by Robert Blake and Scott Wilson as the sociopathic killers.
