As part of the 2019 Toronto True Crime Film Festival, I watched a twentieth-anniversary screening of this biopic of Rubin "The Hurricane" Carter, who spent two decades in prison for a crime he didn't commit. Rubin Carter (Denzel Washington) was the victim of racism for his entire life, spending much of his youth in prison, thanks mostly to the prejudices of racist police officer Della Pesca (Dan Hedaya). In the early 1960s, Carter gains success as a professional boxer, but it comes crashing down when he is arrested in 1966 for multiple homicides in a bar, with him being convicted and sent to prison for three life sentences. Many years later, Lesra Martin (Vicellous Shannon), a young Brooklyn-born man living in Toronto with Lisa Peters (Deborah Kara Unger), Sam Chaiton (Liev Schreiber), and Terry Swinton (John Hannah), picks up Rubin Carter's autobiography at a used book sale. Inspired by The Hurricane's story, Lesra travels to need Rubin in prison, while Lisa, Sam, and Terry try to help prove his innocence.
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