(M) Capote (Miller, 2005) 5

With a tinge of brightness in his voice and the immodest look of an easy showman, Philip Seymour Hoffman digs into Truman Capote with a brave complexity that trumps, quite handily, the work of any other leading man this year. That same complexity is, unfortunately, missing from Dan Futterman's breezy script, which chronicles the author's growing fascination with the killers whose deeds would fill the pages of his magnum opus, In Cold Blood. If we're supposed to care about this illicit entanglement, we need to know much more about the case and the people than the broad, soapy stuff Futterman is willing to provide. It doesn't really matter much, though. Everybody's seeing it for Hoffman, and rightly so; his brand of artistry is (and--- let's not kid ourselves--- has always been) nothing short of priceless.