An astonishingly assured work from first-time feature director Bennett Miller, Capote explores the cost that Truman Capote paid for writing his 1966 nonfiction book In Cold Blood, which chronicled the real-life drama surrounding the murders of a Kansas family. As Capote (Philip Seymour Hoffman, who minced his way to a Best Actor Oscar) forms a bond with one of the killers (Clifton Collins Jr.), he simultaneously feels genuine empathy for the condemned man and sees him as prime material for a literary triumph. Hardly a work of hero worship, Capote depicts a man whose sense of compassion is at odds with his creative instincts.
