True Confessions

True Confessions follows two brothers in late-1940s Los Angeles whose lives have taken opposite paths. Tom Spellacy is a homicide detective, and Desmond Spellacy is a Catholic monsignor who raises money for the diocese and moves easily among the city's wealthy and powerful. When a young prostitute is found murdered, Tom's investigation leads him toward prominent men whose names are tied to the church's finances. As the inquiry reaches the circles his brother depends on, family loyalty and institutional duty pull the two men apart.

Ulu Grosbard directed the film, his second feature after Straight Time, followed later by Falling in Love and The Deep End of the Ocean. Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne wrote the screenplay, and Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff produced it for United Artists. Robert De Niro plays Father Des Spellacy and Robert Duvall plays Detective Tom Spellacy, with Charles Durning, Kenneth McMillan, Ed Flanders and Cyril Cusack in supporting roles.

Released in September 1981, the film runs 108 minutes. Its IMDb rating of 6.3 from around 10,000 votes and TMDB rating of 6.1 from 193 votes indicate moderate audience approval, while a critics' rating of 8.1 from 17 reviews is markedly higher, suggesting reviewers responded to the film more strongly than general viewers did.