Snipers’ story now a movie

Few killers have terrorized more people than the Beltway Snipers.

The story of the murderous pair who got their start in Tacoma is now the subject of a feature film.

In October 2002, John Allen Muhammad and his young protégé, Lee Boyd Malvo, killed 10 randomly selected victims in the Washington, D.C., area. While authorities were erroneously searching for a white truck, the killers were operating out of a blue Chevrolet Caprice they had modified into a mobile sniper’s hide.

The film, “Blue Caprice,” premiered last week at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. It’s a debut feature by New York-based French filmmaker Alexandre Moors, who was unavailable for an interview this week.

The movie begins on the Caribbean island of Antigua, where Muhammad met the teenaged Malvo. But it spends much of its time in Tacoma, according to Philip Cowan, the director of Tacoma’s Grand Cinema. Cowan saw the film last week at Sundance.

Muhammad spent 17 years in the South Sound. He married for the second time, raised three children, started a business that failed, saw his second marriage end, kidnapped his children and acquired a Bushmaster rifle from a Tacoma gun shop.

“Blue Caprice” portrays Muhammad’s grooming of Malvo into a cold-blooded killer – a soldier in the older man’s vendetta on perceived injustices and people who he felt had wronged him.

The film stars Isaiah Washington (“Grey’s Anatomy”) as Muhammad and Tequan Richmond (“Everybody Hates Chris”) as Malvo.

The Hollywood Reporter described the film as “a disturbing, masterfully controlled thriller.”