I wish I knew how to quit Tru: "Infamous"

Ah, yes, another case of two similar movies that focus on the same person/event coming out around the same time, following such dynamic duos as "Volcano"/"Dante's Peak," "Tombstone"/"Wyatt Earp", "Without Limits"/"Prefontaine" and "Deep Impact"/"Armageddon." Only those movies didn't have some goddamn New York twinkletoes running around western Kansas. (Although there was always something fishy about Earp.)

"Infamous" was released about a year after "Capote," which you would think might have helped since "Capote" got five Oscar nominations and one win: the excellent Philip Seymour Hoffman, in a performance second only to "Along Came Polly." ("Raindance!") Alas, I'm not sure anyone actually knew there was another Truman Capote/"In Cold Blood" movie out there. But since I vaguely recalled the reviews being decent, and I'm a sucker for the ol' compare-and-contrast, I TiVoed this movie when it was on one of the HBOs recently.

The story is the same as before: Famous New York writer and social butterfly Truman Capote sees a newspaper story about the murder of a family in Holcomb, Kansas, and decides this will be his next story for The New Yorker. So this fish out of water -- blue whale, really -- goes to rural Kansas to find out more for what eventually becomes a book. Not only a book, but a new kind of writing that will both elevate the author and sort of ruin him.

At first, the very gay Capote tries to ingratiate himself to all the townsfolk, eventually winning them over with tales of the famous people he knows. Then, when two suspects are arrested, Capote meets them, ultimately spending all his time with the quiet, introspective one, Perry Smith. They develop, shall we say, a bond, which makes Capote's efforts all the more taxing, right up to the point where the murderers pay for their crimes.

Playing Capote is Toby Jones, a British actor who I had never seen before (although he apparently was in "Finding Neverland"). Of course, I would see him just a few days later in "The Mist." Here, he's plenty over the top, choosing to push the envelope with personality after Hoffman was more restrained in his demeanor and anguish. Hard to say how well it worked, given Hoffman's Oscar-winning turn is hanging out there. Absent that, I might have liked Jones more. As it is, he was a bit much to take seriously, and I couldn't tell if I should be laughing or not.

The rest of the cast is decent. Sandra Bullock is a nice little surprise as Harper Lee, Capote's friend and the author of "To Kill a Mockingbird." Jeff Daniels is OK as the guy investigating the murders. Daniel Craig -- who I didn't recognize with dark hair -- is better as Perry Smith. The smoldering was a bit uneven, but in the end I may have liked him better than his "Capote" counterpart. Playing smaller roles are Hope Davis, Gwyneth Paltrow, Sigourney Weaver, Isabella Rossellini and Peter Bogdanovich. None is bad, none is great.

Along with how each would-be Truman portrays the writer, the big different with "Infamous" is the storytelling technique. The normal unfolding of the plot is interrupted several times with faux interviews of Capote's friends, made to look like this is a documentary. At other times, such as when a character is reading a letter, the character who wrote said letter is shown talking directly to the camera. Overall, I guess this worked OK, but it was a little jarring and didn't do much to build drama like in "Capote."

In the end, that's really the deal here. Had "Capote" never come out, "Infamous" almost certainly would seemed better. It's still good, I think, but it was impossible to watch this movie without thinking of the other one. Jones was solid in a different way but didn't wow me as much as Hoffman, who finally got the Oscar he should have won for "Twister."