True Story (2015)

Based on the journalist's memoir of the same name, *True Story* is a taut psychological drama centered around the relationship between journalist Michael Finkel and Christian Longo, an FBI Most Wanted List murderer who for years lived outside the U.S. under Finkel's name. The film finds Finkel (Jonah Hill) at his lowest point, having been publicly disgraced and fired from *The New York Times* for fabricating parts of a story. Just as his career seems over, he learns that the captured Longo (James Franco), a man accused of brutally murdering his wife and three children, has been using his identity. Seizing this bizarre and dangerous opportunity for a career-defining exclusive, Finkel begins a series of prison interviews, igniting a complex cat-and-mouse game where the lines between journalistic integrity, personal ego, and masterful deception become perilously blurred. What earns *True Story* its place on a list of best biography movies is its refusal to be a conventional biopic, opting instead for a focused and unsettling character study of two men locked in a symbiotic struggle over truth and narrative. The film is less concerned with the chronology of events and more with the psychological space between its subjects. Anchored by deeply nuanced performances from Hill and Franco, it brilliantly explores the moral ambiguity and ethical compromises inherent in telling someone else's story, especially when the subject is a charismatic manipulator. It transcends a simple retelling by becoming a meta-commentary on biographical storytelling itself, questioning the reliability of its narrator and forcing the audience to grapple with the seductive, and potentially corrupting, power of a "true story."