Dolores Claiborne

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Year:	1995
Country of origin:	USA
Director:	Taylor Hackford
Genre:	First person crime drama
Starring:	Kathy Bates, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Christopher Plummer, Judy Parfitt, David Strathairn
Rating:	4/5
IMDB link:	http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109642/
Tagline:	Sometimes, an accident can be an unhappy woman's best friend
Favourite line:	"I hate the smell of being old."

Question: Is it possible to make a decent movie out of probably Stephen King's most boring book (and that's up against some pretty stiff competition, folks, much as I love him). Answer: Just about.

The plot:
Dolores Claiborne (Kathy Bates) is an old fashioned sort, living in a Maine backwater, washed out, having spent half of her life being run down by an abusive, alcoholic husband and the other half nursing a hideously pedantic rich old bitch for whom everything must be just so. We pick up the story as Dolores' estranged daughter Selena (the scrumptious Jennifer Jason Leigh) comes a-visitin', not out of the goodness of her heart, but because her mother is charged with murder, for the second time in her life. First time round, it was her husband she was accused of killing, though nothing was ever proved whilst, this time, it is the old woman she tends to.
The detective who failed to put her behind bars way back when is convinced she is guilty once more and will stop at nothing to make sure justice is served, a man on a mission, fuelled by the burning resentment he feels at his failure to secure a conviction all those years ago.
But what reason to kill the old hag?
One million dollars worth of reasons, in the form of an inheritance, Dolores the sole beneficiary.

The casting of Bates is a strange one, though perhaps understandable in marketing terms for the drooling masses.
"'Er was in vat Misery filum, wor 'er? Must be a seekwel, eh it?'"
Casting someone who created such an iconic character as Annie Wilkes was brave, especially as that film too was obviously adapted from a novel by the same author, but it pays off as she is clearly the star turn, evoking sympathy by the eyeful as the brow-beaten old spinster, alone in the world now that the woman she cared for is gone, even when in the same room as her own daughter.
Whilst not King's usual raison d'etre, it is hardly alien territory to the macabre one, as this taps into the same dark vein as much of his horror work, despite the lack of ghoulies and ghosties.
A tad overlong, this outstays its welcome by roughly twenty minutes, but nevertheless is a stylish, grimly tense and claustrophobic affair, spiced up by some power acting and King's trademark colourful and jaundiced black humour infusing the piece.
A quality crime drama.