True Confessions (1981) is a thoughtful character study dressed up as a whodunnit. The mystery at the heart of the film isn’t the identity of the killer, but what two brothers are willing to sacrifice in the name of justice. Institutions, power, and duty pull two brothers in opposing directions and they must decide how to navigate their diverging paths together, linked by their blood bond.
Robert De Niro and Robert Duvall, as the brothers, give thoughtful and layered performances. Each man is convincing in his role and brings to his part a subtle humanity that suggests the existence of his character beyond the limited scope of the narrative. Charles Durning, in a supporting role as a corrupt businessman, is equally good, if not sometimes better than his more famous counterparts.
But the true star of True Confessions is its screenwriter Joan Didion. Didion allegedly re-wrote the final draft of the script herself. It is she who reframed the story of the film to put the relationship between De Niro and Duvall before the mystery. Mystery pictures are a dime a dozen, but films that re-imagine that genre as a means of interrogating masculine relationships are few and far between.
Didion fills the film with scenes that speak to character rather than exposition. Even when surveying a crime scene Duvall doesn’t get fussy about clues or evidence, he makes off-color jokes and awkwardly muses about his breakfast. Didion wants the viewer to know the men whose lives are to be vastly changed by the mystery. She insists that we see them as people, not as archetypes or worse, heroes.
Director Ulu Grosbard brings his workmanlike ethic to the proceedings to craft a well acted bit of drama. Grosbard is a filmmaker whose works are only as good as his scripts. That said, True Confessions is one of his best pictures, right behind the madcap Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is He Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? (1971). Grosbard’s gift with actors is very much on display and works in tandem with Didion’s subtle script to realize her portrait of fractured masculinity and the corrupting nature of power.
