Church Biz

By RICHARD CORLISS

TRUE CONFESSIONS Directed by Ulu Grosbard Screenplay by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne

A grand novel, was John Gregory Dunne's True Confessions. Taking as his real-life hook the grisly (and unsolved) Black Dahlia murder case, in which a young woman of no particular virtue was found here and there in a vacant Los Angeles lot in 1947, Dunne created characters who jumped, kicked and back-stabbed off the page. The Spellacy brothers--Detective Tom and Monsignor Des--played each other like a couple of harps and took down half the town's power elite when they played each other wrong. Dunne's was a misanthropic story that moved with reckless energy.

So why does the movie version, with Robert Duvall as Tom and Robert De Niro as Des, proceed at the sluggish pace of a Sodality novena? Perhaps because Dunne's collaborator on the screenplay was his wife, the Empress of Angst, Novelist Joan Didion. Onscreen, characters who should percolate with rage simply simmer. Two exciting, dangerous actors have little to do: Duvall spends too much time pacing and waiting; De Niro's big scene has him hanging up his vestments.

As a pair of crafty old hierarchs, Cyril Cusack and Burgess Meredith seem to be having some informed fun, but most of the characters disappear from memory as soon as they leave the screen. It's a shame:

this could have been a bitterly raucous movie, if only the artists involved hadn't confused seriousness with solemnity. For their penance, they should see any Bunuel movie ten times. --By Richard Corliss

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