Other reviewers here keep referring to this movie as a murder mystery. It's nothing of the kind, Mac and Muff Graham were murdered on Palmyra Island by Buck Walker and his girlfriend, who's name I won't even bother to mention because while Walker went to prison, she got away with murder. The only mystery left here is that Mac Graham's body was never found. Luckily Muff's was and stood testament against at least one of her murderers.
The book by Vincent Bugliosi was interesting in it's first half but then devolved into a blatant and pathetic monument to his ego and self absorbed narcissism. The man had an ego the size of California, to the point that in a book about a couple being brutally murdered he goes on for a page and a half about how he likes to take honey before his closing arguments to sooth his throat! Could anyone be any more self absorbed? Possibly he was trying to gloss over the fact that while he once prosecuted murderers in this case he helped one walk out of the courtroom free as a bird.
The movie takes much from the book but strays quite a bit too. Rachel's Ward's portrayal of the girlfriend is repulsive in that she makes her sympathetic and implies her innocence. Four people were on a deserted island, two ended up dead, the other two showed up in Hawaii with their yacht...if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it's a duck folks. This movie is nothing more than a further homage to Bugliosi's enormous ego at the expense of the truth. Maybe someday someone will write an objective book about this case, I would love to read it.
The book by Vincent Bugliosi was interesting in it's first half but then devolved into a blatant and pathetic monument to his ego and self absorbed narcissism. The man had an ego the size of California, to the point that in a book about a couple being brutally murdered he goes on for a page and a half about how he likes to take honey before his closing arguments to sooth his throat! Could anyone be any more self absorbed? Possibly he was trying to gloss over the fact that while he once prosecuted murderers in this case he helped one walk out of the courtroom free as a bird.
The movie takes much from the book but strays quite a bit too. Rachel's Ward's portrayal of the girlfriend is repulsive in that she makes her sympathetic and implies her innocence. Four people were on a deserted island, two ended up dead, the other two showed up in Hawaii with their yacht...if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it's a duck folks. This movie is nothing more than a further homage to Bugliosi's enormous ego at the expense of the truth. Maybe someday someone will write an objective book about this case, I would love to read it.