Favorite Courtroom Dramas
Submitted by JohnnyW on Mon, 02/28/2005 - 10:04
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- Paths of Glory (1957): Like the later Breaker Morant, Paths of Glory brutally disassembles the myths of glorious war. Set in the French trenches of WWI, the film follows the gross disregard for soldiers' lives by the ranking officers who expect the impossible and are intolerant of failure, going so far as to subject battle-scarred men to a court martial. The film is akin in spirit to the WWI poets, and I cannot stop thinking of Wilfred Owen's poem, "Dulce et Decorum Est."
- Anatomy of a Murder (1959): One of my all-time favorite movies, period. For my money one of Jimmy Stewart's best roles, as he has you going along with his established laid-back, good-guy persona until you suddenly realize how amorally pragmatic he has been the whole film.
- Judgement at Nuremburg (1961): Long and sometimes preachy, Judgement is nevertheless a powerful, watchable film, especially when Richard Widmark's prosecuter shows real footage from the liberation of the concentration camps, and when Burt Lancaster's once-respectable Nazi doctor struggles to make Spencer Tracy's judge understand how an otherwise moral man might make a truly immoral turn under trying circumstances.
- Breaker Morant (1980): A film set during the Boer War, where Australian troops used by the British to supress the Boers are made to take the fall for brutal tactics and war crimes. A raging signal from "down under" that as Australians examined their history, they realized they were often treated as cavalierly by the British as any natives in India or South Africa.
- The Verdict (1982): One of Paul Newman's best performances, Sidney Lumet's study of an alcoholic lawyer's redemption and second chance is understated and compassionate. This should have been Newman's Oscar, not The Color of Money.
- A Cry in the Dark (1988): Known, if at all, for the infamous "Dingoes ate my baby!" line, this film is much, much more than a throwaway line on Seinfeld. Meryl Streep is the Australian housewife tried for the murder of her baby, vanished during a camping trip in the bush. The film questions whether the public and the media have too much of an effect on trial verdicts, as Streep's character is judged by the entire nation partly because she has a personality that doesn't allow her to show emotion publicly; no tears on TV or on the stand means she's guilty, right? Right?
- The Music Box (1989): A bit hokey by the end, this film examines the taboo topic of whether Holocaust survivors could or should help convict suspects forty years or more after the fact, when perhaps their memories of the traumas they endured aren't quite as accurate as they believe. Jessica Lange as the lawyer who believes her Eastern European father has been falsely accused of war crimes is superb. Timely and relevant, as most good courtroom dramas are.
- The Gingerbread Man (1998): Not quite as good as most of the other films here, I included it partly because I love almost anything Altman. Perhaps the only Grisham film to end up the vision of the director rather than of the author, the film inhabits Savannah the way most Altman films do their locations. Robert Downey, Jr. is great as a down-at-the-heels private investigator, as is Robert Duvall as a mentally-ill member of a strange cult-like group of old men.
- Murder on a Sunday Morning (2001): Different than the other films listed here, as it is a documentary, Murder is nonetheless as riveting as any courtroom drama I've ever seen. The case of a black teenager arrested on flimsy evidence for the murder of a white tourist in Jacksonvile, Florida will make you as angry at what is going on as at the fact you are sitting impotently on your couch with no ability to do anything about it. A friend I was watching it with raged, "If they find him guilty, we're going down there tonight!" I won't tell you if we had to make a midnight ride to Jacksonville or not: watch it and see.
What do you think of Witness for the Prosecution or 12 Angry Men, two of my favorites? How about Adam's Rib, or does that count as a courtroom comedy? And would you count Paths of Glory, or does not enough of it take place in a courtroom?
I do like Witness for the Prosecution (especially Charles Laughton) and 12 Angry Men, they just didn't quite make the cut. And I've never seen either Adam's Rib or Paths of Glory, but I've wanted to see Paths of Glory for awhile; this may be a good excuse to do it.
Johnny Waco