This should have been a great movie. If only all those involved in it weren't so smug and self righteous that they presented this piece of fiction as "based on a true story". It's not based on anything except the imagination and perceptions of those who acted in it, produced, directed and wrote it. If they had just been honest, and represented it as the total piece of fiction that it is, it would have made watching this movie a much different experience. But when you dig a little (very little) and find out that this "based on facts" is a total crock, with NOTHING remotely resembling the truth about the cold killer career criminal (who might still be alive today) it portrays on the screen. I ended up hating this movie for this very reason. When you find out the truth, you'll feel manipulated and punked for buying into this trite piece of Hollyweird liberal fiction. All prisoners are just misunderstood nice guys who stole $5 to feed their underprivileged poor siblings. I don't think ANYONE was ever sent to Alcatraz for such trivial matters, it was the "Supermax" of its day, and you were only sent there because of your actions at other prisons. You only left "the Rock" if you showed that you could behave, then you were sent to another prison, nobody was ever put directly from Alcatraz to the street. To be fair, they are not the first ones to do this with an Alcatraz background, Burt Lancasters movie, "The Birdman of Alcatraz" did pretty much the same thing. Glorifying and embellishing the life of a murdering antisocial pimp. To sum it up, this movie is total fiction, the facts and figures are total fiction, the story is total fiction, and is purposefully represented as a true story to propagate the opinions of those that made it. Very dishonest and irresponsible to pass this off as factual in any way.
Review of Murder in the First
