It seems that these days there aren’t as many new courtroom dramas anymore as there used to be in the nineties and before. The last one I can remember is The Lincoln Lawyer, but can’t name any other movie before that. They can be really exciting to watch as they really are verbal battlefields, with the lawyers being the gladiators that fight each other with words and evidence. I loved movies like A Few Good Man, Judgement At Nuremberg or 12 Angry Men so was also looking forward to Sidney Lumet’s The Verdict, starring Paul Newman.
Paul Newman plays Frank Galvin, a lawyer who can hardly keep his head above the water. He drinks and goes to funerals to try to get new clients that way. He still is friends with a former associate (played by Jack Warden) who throws him a case which should be easy for him.
Instead of settling out of court he wants to fight the case, which is about a pregnant woman who ends up in a vegetative state when errors were made during a medical procedure.
As things go in these type of movies Galvin has to find out what actually happened and try to get the right witnesses and evidence to win. It’s great stuff to watch, but of course the best things are always the fireworks in the courtroom. James Mason is excellent as the defense attorney, Ed Concannon and I must admit that I was secretly rooting for him as he really had his case prepared.
I was ready to give this movie a high score, but the unrealistic ending spoiled it for me. If you will watch this stop reading now as I will spoil it a bit. Newman’s character basically has some evidence that proves that an error was made, but the judge decides that the jury has to disregard it. When he then does his closing statement he is talking about how they are the justice system and that no one can tell them differently. Basically he is telling them that they shouldn’t look at the evidence and follow their feeling, which they do. In real life the other party would just appeal the case and still win so the feeling of him winning felt like a false one. It just didn’t make sense. It might give the viewer a feeling that justice was served, but this is not how these things would go in real life. If the ending was different I would have probably given this an 8, but it now only gets:
Score: 6
Ah, another of my favourites. Newman, Mamet and Lumet. Perfect!
It was very well made. Shame about the ending…
I do like this film. I’m a huge fan of director Sidney Lumet and I think Newman’s performance is one of his finest.
Newman’s performance is amazing as you say and I really did like this movie, just was waiting for something amazing at the ending which unfortunately didn’t happen.
btw, I read that a couple of the jurors where actually jurors out of 12 Angry Men and that during the final closing Bruce Willis is amongst the audience. Still haven’t checked this though, but those are fun facts…