Phillip Seymour Hoffman perfectly impersonates the late author (as far as I can tell, based upon the clips I have seen of his later TeeVee appearances as a professional celebrity), and brings a subtle complexity to the role of Truman Capote as he uses (and abuses) everyone around him while researching and writing “In Cold Blood.”
Capote traveled to a sleepy Kansas town that was the site of a grisly quadruple murder in 1959 to write a story for “The New Yorker” but worked instead for five years on the first “non-fiction novel.” He traded on his celebrity to gain the confidence of the wives of the town’s lawmen and used his money to fund the legal appeals of the murderers in order to win their trust and keep them alive long enough to get their side of the story. Of course, he needed to have them swinging from the gallows in order to have an ending for his book. That conflict is at the heart of this movie, which handily shifts its tone as the subject matter grows darker and ratchets up the tension as it builds towards the inevitable (but still shocking) climax.