True Confessions (non horror review)

A weird closing Easter choice. I picked it because it had a lot to do with Catholicism, though I'm not Catholic and how the Church is featured in the film deals with shady Durning, a prostitute found cut in two pieces, an LA cop (Robert Duvall), the cop's high-ranking Monsignor brother (Robert DeNiro), and a priest found dead at a cathouse from heart failure.

There's a lot of hinky activity in the film, a sort of ugly symbiosis often entangling the Church, the police, and body politic. DeNiro tells Burgess Meredith (a fellow priest) he has to accumulate and wield power in order for their churches to be built and souls to be saved. Doing that means DeNiro must often do business with the likes of Durning. Flanders, and Corley...but Durning is the one DeNiro is tired of being associated with the most due to his rampant corruption.

The pacing and development of the story are curious. Like there are interludes that really slow the film such as the brothers visiting their mother (Nolan; I know her from The Twilight Zone), DeNiro returning from golfing to his bedroom, and the complete Catholic ceremony where Durning weds his child away as DeNiro foreseen the whole grandiose affair at the opening of the film after he's much older in a desert church dying of clogged arteries while being visited by his equally older brother. The screenplay really cares a lot about adding extra details to the brothers, while the big story (tied by what would appear to be multiple stories) often seems less interesting to the director and writer. The big story is very noirish, for sure, but I never felt it was as crucial to the writer and director as the brothers' moral quandaries and how to navigate around so much human rot.

I think the problem I have with the film is there is a lacking intensity in the story...but I realize that the entirety of the Catholic Church's involvement, however uncomfortable and complex, was important to the writing of the screenplay. We have this scene where the Cardinal wants Meredith replaced with a younger pastor and DeNiro gaining a higher position, as Meredith requests being sent to the desert...the same desert parish of St. Mary's Duvall finds his brother at the very beginning of the film.

But this just isn't paced with energy, punch, or vigor. That just isn't the film's personality. I admit that I sort of grew weary because of that. Still, any film with DeNiro, Duvall, Durning, Meredith, and McMillan in it can't be all bad, can it? You know, though, it was Rose Gregorio as a cathouse madam who tires of LA and all its ugliness, with a long history with Duvall, I thought came out of the film the best. DeNiro is very muted, reserved, and analytical while Duvall has that darkside to him that he tries to keep in check while doing his best to still be a decent cop despite riding that line of dark and light. The 40s LA lingo among cops was neat, and my favorite scene is probably an argument over how many stretchers are needed to carry the upper and lower torso of a dead prostitute while Duvall and McMillan try to keep their tempers down at location of the main crime. The most intense moments are between Durning and Duvall...I do wish there was more of that.

The most chilling scene is when Duvall locates the stag film warehouse where the murder and splitting of the body took place. It's a bloody mess.