I love you, Phillip Morris (4 Stars)

True Stories #17

Name: Steven Russell

Lived: 14 September 1957 – still alive

Film dates: 1966 to 1998, mostly 1990 to 1998

Film made in 2010

Jim Carrey says that it doesn't feel right to play someone in a film who's still alive. If you look at the previous 16 films in my true stories marathon, you'll see that five of them were about people living when the film was made, so it's not so unusual.

Steven Russell supposedly has an IQ of 163. Having a high IQ doesn't necessarily mean you'll have great success in life, as I know from my own experience, but it usually results in the person having extraordinary abilities. In Steven's case, he set a record for escaping from prison four times, including two escapes from maximum security prisons. One of his escapes was by faking his own death. You need to be a genius to do something like that.

Like many geniuses, his high IQ wasn't obvious to those around him. He was a policeman, and he played piano in church. He was happily married, and a good Christian. There was only one dark secret in his life: he was having a gay relationship. That must have been easy to hide, because as a policeman he could always make excuses about being away from home at all hours.

Eventually Steve comes out of the closet. He confesses everything to his wife and leaves her to live with his boyfriend Jimmy in Miami. What I find strange is that his Christian wife so easily accepted his homosexuality. She never divorced him. Maybe it's because divorce was against her Christian beliefs. Nevertheless, she doesn't understand his homosexuality. After Steve's first arrest for fraud she asks a policeman whether homosexuality and stealing go together.

Steven Russell was a con man. That's something he excelled at. Despite never having gone to college, he read the law books in the prison library and was able to pretend to be a lawyer. Is it usual for prison libraries to have so many law books?

It's in the library that Steven Russell met Phillip Morris, who was presumably interested in other books. It's love at first sight. Phillip was in prison for a minor offence, not returning a rental car. After his release Steven had to escape to be with him.

Phillip Morris was Steven Russell's downfall. Steven escaped repeatedly, but the police could easily arrest him, because they knew he was heading straight to Phillip. If Steven hadn't been in love he'd still be living happily in anonymity somewhere.

After four escapes, the prisons aren't taking any chances. He's been sentenced to life imprisonment (to be precise, 144 years), and he has to spend 23 hours a day in his cell. In his one hour outside his cell he's closely observed. Nobody knows what sort of tricks he'd play next.

My only criticism of the film is that it's too short. The film rushes through his escapes, only showing his faked death in detail. I would have liked to see more.

I'm annoyed by the packaging of the UK Blu-ray. The front cover quotes magazines that call the film "Outrageously funny" and "Hilarious". Did those idiots even bother to watch the film? It's not a comedy. It's a love story. Just because Jim Carrey began his career as a comedian, it doesn't mean that all his films have to be funny.

Success Rate:  - 0.4

	Order from Amazon.com
	Order from Amazon.co.uk
	Order from Amazon.de