Review: Infamous

UK release date: 19th January

Coincidentally made at the same time as the Oscar-winning Capote, this rival project also focuses on the events surrounding the writing of In Cold Blood — Truman Capote’s bestselling account of a shocking mass murder in a remote Kansas farmhouse in 1959.

Where Capote went for understatement, however, Infamous turns up the volume. It boasts a terrific performance from Toby Jones in the lead (one part Deputy Dawg, two parts Oscar Wilde) and punctuates the drama with stylised talking heads from the likes of author Harper Lee (Sandra Bullock) and society maven Babe Paley (Sigourney Weaver).

More bothersome, though, is the heavy-handed portrayal of Capote’s relationship with killer Perry Smith (Daniel Craig) and the foregrounding of the homoerotic tension that underscores his prison visits. If Capote didn’t exist this would be a fascinating failure, but next to it Infamous is mostly entertaining but somewhat superfluous.

Radio Times rating:

***

UK cinema certificate 15
Running time 117mins

Review by Damon Wise

News: Toby Jones

Odd-faced British thesp Toby Jones does a good job as truman Capote in this week’s Infamous, despite following a tough act in Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Oscar-winning performance in last year’s Capote.

A leading role for this top-notch character actor is rare, but he’s got a fair few supporting turns in the works, like playing the Duke of Clarence (aka the future King William IV) in Michael Apted’s Amazing Grace, looking at the efforts of reformer William Wilberforce to end slavery in the British Empire during the early 19th century. It’s due to hit our screens in March.

Then it’s shift forward to the 1920s for Somerset Maugham adaptation The Painted Veil, a romantic drama set in Shanghai during a cholera epidemic, before leaping back to the 17th century for notorious director Peter Greenaway’s Nightwatching, based around the life of Rembrandt – to be played, somewhat implausibly, by The Office‘s Martin Freeman.

Then there’s yet another historical drama – A Harlot’s Progress – but this time with Jones in the lead as artist William Hogarth, whose relationship with a prostitute helps inspire one of his most famous works. It’s due out in November.