In the original adaptation of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, the novelization of the real-life murder of the Clutter family, Robert Blake and Scott Wilson star as Perry Smith and Dick Hickock. I'd never seen the film before, and was more familiar with Blake as the man accused of killing his wife and Wilson as Catherine Willow's casino-owning father on CSI. But in this rather "beautiful" black and white film, the two star as a pair of recent parolees who kill an innocent family of four and then go on the run.

Beautiful doesn't seem like the right word for In Cold Blood, but the Blu-ray edition shines in its black and white depiction. Unlike watching some older films on television that seem to fade, this edition really seems clear cut, like you are dreaming in black and white of an older time. If you've never seen it, it's an interesting character study of the two psychopaths, and if you have, then you've probably either fallen in love with the pacing and storytelling or not. While R-rated movies today seem to inundate us with scares, gore, nudity, and profanity, this is an R-rated movie from the "olden days" that shows us a darker side of human nature.

Throughout, Hickock is the one who seems more dangerous; he seems callous and manipulative, while Smith is the one who is quiet and brooding. Hickock shoplifts just to show that he can, while Smith is concerned that they have a real plan that they could actually use to steal some money. Hickock boasts that "no one will remember us because we aren't leaving any witnesses," but in the end, it's the depicted murderer Smith who says, "The Clutters didn't do anything to me. It had nothing to do with them. They just happened to be there."

Smith's violence is sudden and sharp, and, in the movie, driven by madness. The movie isn't likable because it basically depicts two guys who commit a gruesome crime and then go about their lives in a "business as usual" way. The callousness is chilling, even if we (and everyone else) can debate the reasons why Smith and/or Hickcock killed these people. But the reason Smith gives in the movie is the one that I think answers for much of the evil in the world: wrong place, wrong time. There's a saying that I don't know who to attribute to, but it says that "sometimes we are at the wrong end of someone else's free will."

Humanity will always be a mixed bag of good and bad decisions. In Cold Blood is an example of a seeming "good" set of people who suffer because of someone else's evil. It doesn't make it any better, but it does show that justice is still reigning out there, even if sometimes it comes too late.