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Players v. People. But these are peripheral faults. Of greater importance are the picture's virtues, including Brooks's grimly detailed study of the wintry Kansas plains and his scrupulous attention to authenticity—the Clutter home itself was used, the murders filmed in the room where they occurred. The director's greatest triumph, however, is his use of unknowns. With the exception of a handful of character actors in minor parts, and John Forsythe as a detective, no face in the film is fa miliar—least of all Dick's and Perry's. Thus, like obscure performers in a foreign film, they have no prior images to disturb the fragile illusion that they are not players but people.
As Perry, Robert Blake has the narcissistic good looks Capote described, with "the dark moist eyes" and bril-liantined black hair; he even appears to have "the stunted legs that seemed grotesquely inadequate to the grownup bulk they supported." Scott Wilson, as Dick, has the "long-jawed and narrow face tilted, the left side rather lower than the right," and the "American-style, good-kid" manner that can bounce a check or a baseball with equal ease. It is their performances that lift the film from documentary competence to near brilliance. In the end, the actors have become the criminals, understandable if not forgivable, and Perry's last words, "I'd like to apologize, but to who?", have the persistent ring of a child's unanswerable question that remains in the air after he has gone.