A-List: Top Five Courtroom Dramas
By J. Don Birnam
May 28, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
This idea came to me after reflecting on the recent, under-the-radar Woman in Gold, which recounts the true story of a woman in her quest to recuperate a valuable work of art that was wrongfully taken from her family during World War II. In it, her dashing lawyer (played by, who else?, Ryan Reynolds) takes her case all the way to the United States Supreme Court. But rarer are the dramas that feature scenes of the dry, legal-focused art of appellate practice such as this movie. Much more common is the real-life testimony of witnesses, and the drama it entails, of trial court scenes.
Today, I will focus on legal-oriented movies with good courtroom scenes, and pick my favorite five amongst those. If this column were to instead list the five best courtroom scenes alone, one may land on the touching scene in, for example, A Miracle on 34th Street or on the hysterical and surprising antics of Jim Carrey in Liar, Liar. But both of those movies, viewed more broadly, are hardly “courtroom” dramas on a grander scale. For the same reason, I will resist including Chicago, a favorite of mine, on this list.
Nor are legal but mostly-court and judge free legal thrillers like the plethora of John Grisham novels, or Erin Brokovich, or even A Civil Action under consideration today. Instead, today I focus on movies in which a trial, or a key courtroom scene, play a pivotal part.
Today the list of honorable mentions is short and sweet. First, I have to give a shout-out to The Verdict, the 1982 Sidney Lumet vehicle that carried Paul Newman’s career into its final stages. An alcoholic, disaffected lawyer finds he has a soul when he helps an unsympathetic victim fight the Catholic hospital that wronged her. Doing what he believes is right against all odds finds him personal redemption. The courtroom, then, is what it symbolizes in many of these movies: a place of penance and rediscovery.
In sixth place I have to say – and don’t laugh – is the 2001 now classic Legally Blonde. Cementing Reese Witherspoon’s career as a mainstay American Sweetheart, Legally Blonde is a ridiculous romantic comedy from the very beginning. Elle’s admission to Harvard Law School, her prestigious internship, and her stunning discovery of the true murderer in a state court trial, are all as improbable as my columns winning a Pulitzer Prize. But the charm and heart with which they are delivered, and the wit and fun with which each scene is carried, both make for a refreshing approach to the normally somber tones that one sees in courtroom dramas and provide now-classic one-liners Where one normally finds selfish, brutal characters, in Legally Blonde one finds loving, happy-go-lucky girls. In place of hardened judges and evil defendants, one finds witting accomplices and nitwits. A guilty pleasure to be sure, but when it comes to slapstick courtroom flicks, none compare to Legally Blonde.
5. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
For the fifth place entry, however, I have to go with the movie adaption of Harper Lee’s all-time classic, To Kill a Mockingbird. Gregory Peck pulls off the unbelievable in portraying so deftly the beloved Atticus Finch, tasked with the impossible case of defending a black man for the murder of a white woman in the highly-prejudiced South. As you undoubtedly know, his life and that of his family are imperiled along the way, and his sense of right and wrong, of justice and honor, are challenged at every step.
Courtroom dramas normally feature a final scene of redemption and justice that is supposed to restore your faith in the effectiveness of the courts, lawyers, and the justice system. (Hollywood is a bizarre place, given how despair abounds, by contrast, in movies about love).
What makes To Kill a Mockingbird noteworthy, however, is that it does not feature that easy, climatic courtroom scene and instead takes us back to that time when art (literature and their cinematic adaptations) was not afraid to point out social injustices. Sure, Atticus is a hero and his acts save the innocent characters, in his own way, in the end. Undoubtedly, your faith in at least lawyers is supposed to be restored. But the condemnation of the system is ever present, and deserved, and no less prominent than Atticus’s do-good personality.
4. Philadelphia (1993)
Speaking of somewhat unrealistic portrayals, my fourth pick is Philadelphia, a movie with cultural and movie-related repercussions that are hard to quantify despite the somewhat unrealistic pairing of its heroes.
Tom Hanks won his first of back-to-back Oscars (becoming the last person to date to achieve this rare feat) for his portrayal of an AIDS-stricken lawyer who files an impossible lawsuit against the firm that fired him because of his condition. His Oscar speech is one of the most moving speeches I have ever heard (and it inspired another movie in which an actor wins an award and unwittingly outs his gay drama teacher - the 1997 Kevin Kline comedy In & Out). That’s one cultural repercussion. The other, of course, is Bruce Springsteen’s “The Streets of Philadelphia,” a touching song that also took home an Oscar and still reverberates today.
The last is, obviously, that this was perhaps the first mainstream movie to talk openly about the HIV epidemic that had by then afflicted the country for 10 years, and, at the same time, to touch upon the realities of many gay Americans at the time. Taking tremendous and brave career risks, Antonio Banderas and Tom Hanks played lovers, while, in another risky move, Denzel Washington portrayed a somewhat homophobic lawyer tasked with prosecuting Hanks’ civil lawsuit.
Yes, the movie falls into the inevitable courtroom drama trap of making a hero of the lawyer, but all is forgiven when the heart the story conveys is so touchingly translated into those scenes in which Washington’s character finally wakes up to the reality of his client. On its own, the movie is touching and memorable. As a landmark civil rights movie, however, it is also noteworthy and memorable.
3. Witness For the Prosecution (1957)
One of Agatha Christie’s only true courtroom dramas, Witness for the Prosecution is the only movie in this list that will not touch upon a seemingly important social subject such as civil rights or the meaning of guilt and innocence against a broader moral compass. Instead, the thrilling mystery involves a tale as old as time: murder and a love affair. Marlene Dietrich stuns as the dutiful wife of a man accused of murder, whose defense is taken on by the timeless Charles Laughton, in this Billy Wilder classic.
A large part of the gimmick behind the advertising for this movie centered around the many twists and turns of its plot. True to form, the Agatha Christie play-turned-movie keeps viewers guessing both the identify and the nature of the true culprits. Did Dietrich’s husband kill that rich old widow? And what version of Dietrich’s competing stories are true - can she give an alibi to her husband or is she, as the title suggests, a key witness for the prosecution?
The beauty of this movie may not be in its long-lasting themes of social importance, but it is never an easy task to portray a courtroom drama in an entertaining and non-repetitive way. The makers of this movie do just that.
2. A Few Good Men
A controversial pick, no doubt, but the 1992 Best Picture nominee did inspire yours truly to seek a legal career, so I must name it as my second favorite courtroom drama of all time.
The cynical and pragmatic lawyer played by Tom Cruise is complemented well by the starry-eyed, if reckless, Demi Moore character, and they meet their match in a parade of ruthlessness that includes Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Bacon, and Jack Nicholson in a bone-chilling turn. Cruise and Moore are tasked with defending two marines from a murder charge after an initiation ritual goes horribly awry. Soon they realize they signed up for more than they bargained for, because the marines’ motivations for the acts implicate important figures in their base.
That the script was penned by Aaron Sorkin is of course a big reason this movie has become so ingrained in the cultural ethos. Who else could pen such a quick banter back and forth dialogue that ends with the classic “You can’t handle the truth!” explosion that eventually leads to the demise of Jack Nicholson’s character’s Colonel Jessup? Never mind that Cruise’s character would have been without question disbarred (and, in the context of a military tribunal, likely arrested) for badgering the witness, asking irrelevant questions, leading his own witness, testifying not under oath, and arguing with the judge. Never mind that Jessup would have had a savvy lawyer of his own who would have surely had him invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, or that he would have likely quashed any last-minute subpoena to have him testify. And never mind, of course, that the kitsch in some of the lines is as thick as the wit.
Leaving all this aside, the drama portrays well the ups and downs of a trial, the emotional roller coaster that every witness and every setback can bring. As the life of two privates hangs in the balance, it is left up to their wily but aggressive lawyer to uncover the truth that he eventually does seem to handle.
Years later, Tom Cruise would be shunned as a nutty celebrity, but back then he gave a tour de force performance that still chills the bone and rivals Gregory Peck or Denzel Washington any day of the week. And the clever way in which he arrives at the truth, coercing Jessep to confess, is amusing, gripping, and even a tad realistic. If this movie doesn’t restore your faith in the justice system…then good for you, because it shouldn’t. But it’s still a good movie.
Oh and, by the way, at some point A Few Good Men even explores the timeless and hopeless question about the dividing line between right and wrong in the context of military and other such orders. If your duty is to obey your commanding officers, but he orders you to do something illegal, should you still do it? And, if you do it, are you guilty of a crime? A Few Good Men seems to come down firmly on the side of “You shouldn’t do it,” and given the experiences humanity learned in the period examined in the first-place movie on this list, it’s not hard to understand why.
1. Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
Before Kate Winslet inspired sympathy as the reformed Nazi guard in The Reader, the urgent questions of guilt, morality, culpability, and proper punishment regarding the most vicious crimes in human history were explored much more adroitly, and without the romantic kitsch, in the 1961 masterpiece Judgment at Nuremberg.
Maximilian Schell won an Oscar for his portrayal of the aggressive but passionate defense attorney who had the unenviable task of explaining the acts of certain German judges during the horrific World War II events in their country. Spencer Tracy is the lead judge on the case, and Burt Lancaster is one of the main defendants. Marlene Dietrich makes another appearance, this time as the widow of a German general sentenced to death by one of the German judges under the Nazi regime. The cast alone suggests brilliance.
And the brilliance is delivered. Not only is the acting as flawless as you’d expect from this cast, the difficult questions of right and wrong, moral guilt and legal guilt, and proper punishment that it explores, still resonate today in our society given events from Abu Ghraib to the Boston Marathon bombings. Cynical almost to a fault, Judgment also suggests at the political expediency for the U.S., caught in the beginning of the Cold War, of going easy on some defendants at Nuremberg. And as even-handed as one can be about these events, the movie also explores fairly German explanations for why they did what they did.
Historic, insightful, and thought-provoking, Judgment at Nuremberg is probably one of the best movies ever made. Had it been released any other year, it would have not run against the buzz saw of the critical and Oscar behemoth West Side Stor, and would have won more prizes from critics and the industry alike. No matter, as it remains far and away the most searing and thought-provoking courtroom drama in history. I don’t think - and, I hope - no movie will ever surpass it.