There is a point late in Capote where author Truman Capote is lamenting the fact that the subjects of his book keep getting stays of execution. "It's harrowing," he says. "All I want to do is write the ending, and there's no fucking end in sight." Amen, brother. That's how I felt about the film.

In a special features clip on the DVD, the director (Bennett Miller) says he wanted a very simple film where the camera didn't take you out of the story, usually a viewpoint I completely agree with and applaud. But Miller's recipe for simplicity is simply plodding literalism and a lack of dynamism in his storytelling.

Far too many shots in this movie consist of setting the camera in place and letting it film whatever the actors happen to do. Sometimes they switch to the perspective of a cameraman holding the camera as steadily as possible and filming an actor in extreme close-up. Every so often they throw in an outdoor establishing shot with a wide view of a bleak countryside highlighting the isolated setting of a house or a prison. It's all so studied and unimaginative you could scream.

The director said in his interview that he doesn't like storyboarding or framing out how a scene will play. It shows. This is cinema of the moment, with no feel for how the pacing will play out over the course of almost two hours. Every beat of dialogue is played out slowly, methodically, deliberately. Sometimes it seems as though the actors are thinking about how they want to play the next line with each pause in delivery.

For those who don't know, Capote deals with the period in Capote's life (after having established himself as a talented short story author and scriptwriter) from the time he first sees a news story about the brutal murder of a small family in rural Kansas up to the eventual execution of the killers and the publication of In Cold Blood, Capote's novel that changed the way the world thought about literature (many claim it to be the first novelization in story form of a nonfiction subject). Along the way, we get glimpses of Capote's high-living social whirl, his friendship with Harper Lee (as she writes, publishes, and sells film rights for To Kill A Mockingbird), and a few subtle small allusions to his implied gay personal life.

We see Capote as a conflicted man who both cares about the protagonists of his novel and as a ruthless manipulator who will say anything and lie bald-facedly to get what he wants. Philip Seymour Hoffman carries the movie with his performance, as he is the focal point of every scene. He does the requisite portrayal of the outrageously flamboyant Capote with the high pitched, lisping voice and the showman's mannerisms. But I never felt like we learned a lot about Capote the man.