In Cold Blood (1967)

Release date: 1968-03-07
Country: USA
Language: English
Director: Richard Brooks
Production Co: Columbia Pictures, Pax Enterprises
Genre: Drama, Crime, Biography, History
Rating: 7.9/10
Length: 2h 14min

Storyline

In meeting in Kansas, ex-cons Perry Smith and Dick Hickock are breaking several conditions of their respective paroles. The meeting, initiated by Dick, is to plan and eventually carry out a robbery based on information he had received from a fellow inmate about $10,000 cash being locked in a hidden safe in the home of the farming Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas. After the robbery, they plan on going to Mexico permanently to elude capture by the police. Each brings a necessary personality to the partnership to carry out the plan, Dick who is the brash manipulator, Perry the outwardly more sensitive but unrealistic dreamer with a violent streak under the surface. Perry literally carries all his dreams in a large box he takes with him wherever he goes. The robbery does not go according to plan in any respect, the pair who ultimately hogtie and execute all four members of the Clutter family, only coming away from the home with $43 in cash. As Perry and Dick go on the run, a murder ...

Plot Keywords

true crime, murder of family, gallows, based on true story, reporter, capital punishment, hanging, based on novel, death row, fantasy sequence, kansas, acoustic guitar, childhood memory, nonlinear timeline, homoeroticism, flashback, husband wife relationship, mother daughter relationship, mother son relationship, courtroom

Short Review

It's both a "true crime" movie and a poetic account of two young men who, by committing an act of unspeakable brutality, unleash the furies against themselves.