PHILADELPHIA
A film review by Jon A. Webb
Copyright 1994 Jon A. Webb
Tom Hanks plays a lawyer who was fired by his legal firm for having AIDS. Denzel Washington is the ambulance-chasing lawyer who prosecutes the law firm for doing this. Mary Steenburgen defends the firm.
I liked this movie as a whole, but found some serious problems with parts of it. Tom Hanks acting, for example, is great. I didn't know he had the kind of intensity required to display such a range of emotion so quietly. He really carries this movie, and deserves the accolades being heaped upon him for this role, independently of the courage he showed in taking it.
Jonathan Demme's direction is normally excellent, making it all the more odd that he flubs some of the testimony so badly. He is great when he is directing Hanks--I remember especially the street scene after Hanks's first meeting with Washington, and the soaring fantastic opera scene. Demme seems to have a gift for drawing out these kind of individual performances (remember Byrne's dance at the beginning of "Stop Making Sense"?) (By the way, the music in this film is excellent, and really enhances the story line.)
But in the courtroom, the direction, or possibly the editing, is badly flubbed. You don't have experienced lawyers, who are trying to prove they are not bigots, just get up on the stand and start referring to the Old Testament's views on homosexuality--at least, not without a lot of goading. The writing is weak here, too; it's as if the writer wasn't interested in dramatizing what should be one of the two major points of the film.
There are a few other odd scenes as well. Hanks's relationship with his family is oddly uncomplicated. It is as if Demme wasn't intersted in these scenes, and wanted to get past them with as little diversion from the main story line, but then, why put them in at all? They aren't strictly necessary to the story line.
Washington's homophobia is not convincing. I'm fairly sure he could have portrayed a convincing homophobe, after seeing his great dramatic skill, so the problem must once again have been a lack of clear direction.
It is always nice to see Mary Steenburgen. Here she seems conflicted about her role, which is appropriate given the subject matter. I thought she was just about the best thing about the courtroom scenes, after Hanks's brooding stillness.
.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews