The Hurricane

The Hurricane tells the story of Rubin Carter, a middleweight boxing contender whose career was derailed in June 1966 when he was arrested and charged with a triple murder at a New Jersey bar. Convicted and sentenced to prison terms, Carter insisted on his innocence and wrote about his case from his cell. The book drew public attention but did not win him his freedom, and after years behind bars he withdrew from any hope of release. Much later, a young man named Lesra Martin read Carter's story and became convinced of his innocence. With three Canadian friends, Lisa Peters, Sam Chaiton and Terry, he took up the effort to clear Carter's name.

Norman Jewison directed the film, the seventeenth of the nineteen features in his career in chronological order, following Bogus and preceding Dinner with Friends. Armyan Bernstein and Dan Gordon wrote the screenplay, and Bernstein produced with Jewison and John Ketcham. Denzel Washington plays Carter, with Vicellous Shannon as Lesra Martin, Deborah Kara Unger, Liev Schreiber and John Hannah as the three Canadians, and Dan Hedaya as Della Pesca. The credited cast runs to seventy-three names.

The film had a budget of 50 million dollars and took about 74 million dollars worldwide, a modest return. On IMDb it holds 7.6 out of 10 from roughly 107,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.4 from a much smaller pool of about 1,571. A critics' rating of 7.4 from 113 reviews sits close to what audiences gave it.