'The Verdict' (1982)
A retrospective movie review by Walter Frith
wfrith@cgocable.net
Member of the ‘Online Film Critics Society' http://ofcs.org/ofcs/
Director Sidney Lumet is notoriously respected for getting his films made in record time, well under budget, and they are usually very good. Even his lesser films are still very admirable and he has been nominated a few times for the Oscar but has never won. His first big splash in film was in 1957 when he was nominated for the film '12 Angry Men' which is the best film ever made about men interacting with each other. It details a jury deliberating the fate of a man and tempers flare as the case is dissected piece by piece. His best decade was the 1970's when he made such great films as 'Serpico', 'Dog Day Afternoon', 'Network', 'Murder on the Orient Express', and 'Equus'. Lumet's films are never a technical revelation but academics are the important parts of a film and Lumet never compromises on that. He also is very good at shocking audiences with subject matter that he always manages to take to another level.
His 1982 film 'The Verdict', is probably one of the most powerful films to use silence as its strength and next to Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey', I can't think of a more powerful film to use silence. As a story of redemption, it is flawless. It salvages one man's career from alcoholic lawyer to legal hero who triumphs over some of the most powerful forces in society.
Paul Newman gives one of his top three performances (the others are 'The Hustler' and 'Hud') in a role that many felt should have won him the Oscar. He lost to Ben Kingsley in 'Gandhi' but Newman did get his Oscar, like a lot of people for the wrong role, for 1986's 'The Color of Money'. Oh, well. At least it was a sequel to 'The Hustler'. He plays Frank Galvin, a divorced, alcoholic Boston lawyer about to take on the case of his life. A young woman was allegedly given the wrong anesthetic by her physicians during child birth and was put into a coma and declared brain dead. Newman represents the woman's sister and brother in law who sue the doctors and the Catholic archdiocese which runs the hospital where everything went wrong. Working against a cunning, unethical, unorthodox and snake of a defence attorney named Ed Concannon (James Mason), Newman only has one friend, Mickey Morrissey (Jack Warden) who can help him with the case. He refers to Mason as "the prince of darkness" and tries to talk Newman out of going to court. It's a case that should never have come to trial as an offer was made to settle out of court but Newman turns it down by thinking it's a pay off to look the other way.
Newman not only has the difficulties of dealing with the defence but has to overcome a biased judge, enraged clients who feel left out of the decision making process, the betrayal of someone close to him and the fact that his law practice hasn't been good lately. Combine that with the fact that his adversaries have more resources than he does truly puts him in a position to overcome.
The film received five Oscar nominations --- Best Picture, Best Director (Sidney Lumet), Best Actor (Paul Newman), Best Supporting Actor (James Mason) and Best Screenplay Adaptation.
Another great asset to this film is that it's written by David Mamet. Based on the novel by Barry Reed, Mamet spices the screenplay up with great social observations but never detracts from the fact that it's a story of redemption above anything else. The courtroom scenes are very powerful and the film has a great use of music score in the fact that hardly has one. The nice thing about this film is the fact that there is no media frenzy involved on screen and it is a very human story that is made very credible by the fact that the characters are people that many of us know in our real lives. It's one of those heavy handed dramas without an ounce of comic relief and is more than great film making, it's a great lesson in overcoming life's truly difficult obstacles.
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