Honorable Mentions: 12 Angry Men
Although often thought of as one of, if not THE, courtroom movie, 12 Angry Men just doesn't quite move me like it seems to do others. Something about the slow turning of the jurors over the course of the movie, as well as the coincidental knowledge of some of the men, just rings hollow and contrived to me. And it felt that way when first reading the play in high school, before I was aware of the movie. Sidney Lumet is one of my favorite filmmakers, but this wasn't high enough in my ratings to make it onto the list.
...And Justice for All
Not just memorable for Al Pacino's great work, but also for showing the case load that many lawyers have. Although we know they're overworked, in seemingly every other law movie, it seems the case at the center of the movie is the only case the main character has to deal with. Here we see Pacino struggle at managing his case load and sometimes the consequences are paid by his clients (in heartbreaking ways). It's a good, not great, movie, but I like that it shows this aspect of the life of an attorney in a way that seemingly no other movies show.
Michael Clayton
I also want to shine a spotlight on movies like Michael Clayton that aren't directly "courtroom movies" but are tangentially related to uncovering the truth surrounding a legal case. I initially had Michael Clayton on the list, but then realized it doesn't have many (any?) significant moments actually in a courtroom.
Now, onto the list:
10. The Insider
Michael Mann's biopic of the take down of big tobacco in the courts contains some of the best performances in the careers of Al Pacino, Russell Crowe, and Christopher Plummer. And as always in a Mann movie, the cast is perfect from top to bottom, there's great work from character actors like Bruce McGill, Diane Venora, Philip Baker Hall, Stephen Tobolowsky, and many others. And Mann really digs into some of the minutiae of the law system that held up prosecuting big tobacco for so long, as the companies tried to hold former employees to the non-disclosure agreements they'd previously signed, even as they were now no longer employees. It's a fascinating movie, one of Mann's best, and a great look at the intersection between big legal cases, media, and public health.
9. The People vs. Larry Flynt
Woody Harrelson is one of our most underrated actors, and The People vs. Larry Flynt is his best work on screen. Playing relentless rebel Larry Flynt, Harrelson is funny, charming, repulsive, tragic, and infinitely watchable. He leads us through the (literal) trials and tribulations the Hustler Magazine founder went up against in his life and makes every bit of it entertaining. Aided in the movie by supporting work from Edward Norton and a surprisingly amazing performance from Courtney Love, this is also one of the best movies in the storied career of director Milos Forman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Amadeus). The law part of the movie is mostly concerned with what Flynt was concerned with, which is that the First Amendment right of Freedom of Speech should be applied even to things you don't want to hear. Maybe stuff that offends you. Flynt's cases set the precedent of political cartoons, commentary, and such qualifying as free speech. As Flynt says after his court victory "If they'll protect a scumbag like me, then they'll protect all of you!" Profound, ridiculous, tasteless, and funny. This is a surprisingly wonderful movie.
8. A Few Good Men
The first time the name Aaron Sorkin became known to most people was from his play that was turned into the movie A Few Good Men. As all Sorkin scripts are, this movie is filled with great monologues and dialog exchanges. The script crackles not quite with the same energy that Sorkin would bring to later works, when he had honed his craft some more, but still within the confines of a courtroom movie, Sorkin's dialog elevates this movie above its conventions. Sure, the terrific cast of actors who all do good work (with only Demi Moore seeming out of her element, although she's trying) surely helps elevate the movie also. Assured direction from Rob Reiner keeps things moving towards an inevitable conclusion. The movie feels almost preordained, but part of the joy is in watching it all play out anyway. Although not nearly as powerful as another military court movie that will show up later on the list, A Few Good Men touches on a lot of the difficulties in the military, including codes of conduct, written and unwritten rules, and not talking about things that happened even if it would save your case.
7. Rashomon
Undoubtedly the least "courtroom"-y movie on the list, Rashomon is about the inability to find objective truth. What supposedly happens is that a man and his wife are attacked by a bandit, who kills the husband and rapes the wife. Rashomon is made up of 4 versions of the story, told by the captured bandit, the wife, a woodcutter who observed the incident, and (through a psychic medium) the murdered husband himself. None of the accounts exactly match with each other, with each story coming to show the storyteller in the best light. For example, the bandit's story shows him challenged by the husband (trying to impress his wife), an intense and deadly sword fight, and then the wife being so impressed by his virulent masculinity that she gives herself to him. The other stories contradict this, but also contradict each other in various ways. We're left to try and piece together the likely truth, but the point is that true objective truth is unknowable because each and every one of us views the world through our own completely subjective prism. A pretty heady concept, and one not explored often enough in these kinds of movies, I think, as everyone is always looking for "THE TRUTH" without realizing that it is unknowable.
6. The Verdict
One of Paul Newman's best performances comes in this great Sidney Lumet movie, with a script by David Mamet. Newman was at that stage in his career, at the age of 57, where he could truly do no wrong. He never gave bad performances, but he sometimes seemed to coast on his good looks and charm. Not here. We see the lines in his face. We see the toll that life has taken on this man. I think we took Newman for granted sometimes, his abilities as an actor and not just a star, and this may be his best work. He plays a down on his luck attorney given an open and shut medical malpractice suit that takes on a life of its own. Although given the option to settle for a huge sum of money, Newman opts to go to trial against the big bad guys. Newman is an alcoholic, and the case gives him a new lease on life...kind of. He needs this case to give himself a sense of himself. Who is he at this point in his life? What has he become? What does he want to become? What can he live with himself as? The Verdict is more a story about a man's journey than it is a dive into the legal system. Lumet, Mamet, and Newman make the journey well worth our time, all giving some of their best work.
5. A Civil Action
"They'll see the truth"
"The truth? I thought we were talking about a court of law. C'mon, you've been around long enough to know that a courtroom isn't a place to look for the truth. You're lucky to find anything around here that even resembles the truth. You disagree? Since when?"
"8 kids are dead, Jerry."
"Jan, that suit fits you better than that sentimentality. That's not how you made all that money all these years, is it? You wanna know when this case stopped being about dead children? The minute you filed a complaint, the minute it entered the justice system."
Like The Insider, a great look at how the big businesses in the world can shit on the every day people and get away with it for so long. John Travolta stars as real life lawyer Jan Schlictman, who took on big chemical companies for poisoning the water in a small Massachusetts town. Travolta loses everything as he fights the big companies, his money, home, law partners, everything. And the bad thing is, spoiler alert, he loses the case too. That the EPA later took up the case and beat the companies into many millions of dollars in cleanup and restitution costs is little solace for us as the movie's credits begin to roll. Written and directed by Steve Zaillian (who also made the even greater Searching for Bobby Fischer), shot by the legendary Conrad L. Hall, it's got a tremendous cast, not just Travolta doing some of the best work of his career, but also Robert Duvall, John Lithgow, Tony Shalhoub, William H. Macy, Kathy Bates, and more. Impeccable from top to bottom, I was floored when I researched this list and found that this movie only has a 60% on RottenTomatoes. I don't know why. This movie may not strike any new ground, but it's a gorgeously filmed, wonderfully written, and perfectly acted movie. And, like The Verdict, it takes on the idea of settling vs. going to trial. Everyone wants Travolta to settle so that they can get their money. Travolta even tells one of the sick mothers that justice will come from the pockets of the big companies. These two movies show different sides of the coin of going to trial versus settling for large sums of money.
4. Paths of Glory
One that I didn't immediately think about as even being a courtroom movie is this masterpiece from Stanley Kubrick. Long time readers will know that I'm not the hugest Kubrick fan, but I do love a few of his movies (2001 and The Shining being the others). Kirk Douglas stars in this movie as a WWI French Colonel defending a group of men against a court martial for cowardice after they refused to go on a suicide mission attempting to take a German stronghold, a stupidly ordered attack only meant to show bravery by Generals angling for promotions. We see the politics and scheming behind the scenes of both the military and its system of law. Douglas does maybe the best work of his career as Colonel Dax, and his great working relationship with Kubrick on this movie was what led Douglas to bring Kubrick aboard Spartacus a few years later, where both men's controlling natures clashed. Still, what we have here is one of the great idealistic fights against the system. At once part of it, yet disgusted by it, Colonel Dax fights for what is right, even when it's a losing battle.
3. My Cousin Vinny
Joe Pesci's best work, yeah I said it, is here as the talented beginning attorney Vinny Gambini. This movie is standard courtroom stuff from beginning to end, lifted up by the energy and life the actors bring to it. Not just Pesci, although seriously Pesci is amazing in this movie with how effortlessly he carries it, but Marisa Tomei, who deservedly won an Oscar for her broad portrayal that didn't really hint at how she'd later become one of our best actresses. Also Ralph Macchio as Vinny's cousin that is on trial for a murder he didn't commit. Fred Gwynne playing my favorite judge character ever ("what is a yute?"), and a supporting cast littered with great character actors like Austin Pendleton, James Rebhorn, Bruce McGill, and Lane Smith as the prosecuting attorney. A terrific script and efficient direction, as well as a look into some of the technicalities of the law (many of which Vinny keeps unknowingly tripping over and paying the price for) really make this movie that could've been a cookie cutter comedy into something special.
2. Close-Up
Close-Up is a fascinating and brilliant look at a real life case in which a man claimed to be a famous Iranian filmmaker, impressed a family, only to have them find out that he wasn't that director and his subsequent trial for fraud. That may not sound like the most compelling movie, but writer/director Abbas Kiarostami's genius use of documentary and recreation footage (where the people played themselves, and footage of the trial is intercut with the recreation of events), helps give everything an intrigue and strange atmosphere that kept me riveted. The story concerns Hossain Sabzian, a poor print shop worker who is obsessed with the movies, and is intentionally mistaken for famed Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf while on a bus one day. The woman who mistakes him, Mrs. Ahankhah, does so because he claims to be the filmmaker. But when she introduces him to her family, including her sons who also are passionate about film, the little lie takes on more weight, and Sabzian goes along with it, as this is seemingly the first time anyone has really listened to him. It makes him feel important instead of poor and worthless. He is listened to, seen, and respected. We can all sympathize with that feeling, I think.
Although he admits to taking some money from the family, that he asked for and they freely gave, he doesn't see himself as a criminal. He didn't intend to rob the family or anything, I think he was simply a little bit off in the head maybe, and lonely, and in need of the kind of attention he got from the Ahankhah's. The movie has a lot to say about the needs of humanity and how we don't often get what we emotionally need. It also says a lot about the nature of performance and what kind of performances we are all always giving, even when we're trying not to.
1. Miracle on 34th Street
My favorite holiday movie, but it wouldn't be on this list, much less this high, if I didn't think it was a great movie, period. It has everything you could want in a movie, a great script, characters, terrific actors like Natalie Wood and Maureen O'Hara, beautiful cinematography, and all that. It's a big classic studio movie, and one that I find myself affected by more and more as the years go by. A look at the struggle between logic and faith, between hope and reality, between optimism and pessimism, between believing in magic or not. One could easily see it as a retelling of the story of Jesus, with believers and non-believers, persecution, a trial, and all that. I don't see it that way, I see it as a simple tale, told simply and wonderfully. I have even always loved that the story comes about because everyone is acting in their own selfish interests. From the judge holding off on making a ruling so as to not anger potential voters to the post office workers sending the "Santy Claus letters" to the courthouse just so they'll stop taking up so much space in their building. It's a funny twist for a Christmas movie, but one that I love. That this is all wrapped around a court movie is really interesting to me, and one that feels pretty accurate to the law as well. It shows that although "courtroom movie" is a genre unto itself, you can insert pretty much any kind of movie within that framework. Drama, comedy, romance, satire, even a Christmas movie.
And Edmund Gwenn will always be Santa Claus to me.
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