True Confessions (1981) on Netflix
In 1948, Monsignor Desmond Spellacy builds up the Los Angeles Archdiocese's projects. His older brother Tom, a homicide detective, investigates a young woman's murder in a vacant lot.
- Netflix3.3/5
- IMDb6.3/1010,415 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes69%
Trailer
Plot summary
Monsignor Desmond Spellacy works for the Los Angeles Archdiocese in 1948, developing church projects at low cost. He overlooks the disreputable dealings of Jack Amsterdam, a construction magnate and Catholic layman whose church ties serve his own interests. Desmond's older brother Tom is a homicide detective, once a bagman for Amsterdam, and he resents the hypocrisy of men like Amsterdam. When a young woman is found murdered in a vacant lot, Tom and his partner Frank Crotty take the case.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about True Confessions (1981)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- When he was hired for True Confessions, Robert De Niro had only two weeks to shed as much as he could of the weight he had put on for Raging Bull.
- The monsignor played by Robert De Niro is thought to be based on Msgr. Benjamin Hawkes, who oversaw the growth of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles from the 1950s into the 1980s. De Niro watched Hawkes say Mass to prepare.
- Production ran over schedule, and the overrun forced the film's original composer, Bill Conti, to drop out of the project.
- Conductor Paul Salamunovich, then choir director at St. Basil's parish, was hired to coach Robert De Niro on the sung Latin responses of the Mass and to conduct the film's choral segments.
