True Story (2005)

On the eve of the day in 2002 when The New York Times effectively ended his journalism career by exposing the Jayson Blair-style fictions in his Times Magazine story on cocoa workers in West Africa, Finkel coincidentally received ''the journalistic equivalent of a winning lottery ticket.'' He learned of a man named Christian Longo who'd allegedly murdered his wife and three kids before hightailing it to Mexico and posing as a well-known journalist — namely, Michael Finkel of The New York Times. Yes, this is yet more proof that truth is always stranger than fiction in True Story. But there's a basic problem with Finkel's otherwise smoothly written account of the two men's intertwining and declining fortunes as Finkel becomes Longo's sole friend as the latter faces trial: Ultimately, you just don't dredge up enough sympathy for either of these guys.