Review of Find Me Guilty (2006) by Spangle — 04 Nov 2017

Sidney Lumet's Find Me Guilty tells a story that is almost too absurd to believe. Sent to prison for thirty years on a variety of charges, Jackie DiNoscio (Vin Diesel) is given a chance to turn state's witness against his friends in the Lucchese crime family. However, he refuses. What ensues is a nearly two year trial involving Jackie and the rest of the leading members of the Lucchese crime family in New Jersey. Complicating matters is the fact that, not only are all defendants being tried at the same time, but Jackie has opted to act as his own attorney. Funny, terrifically acted, and an engrossing drama in its own right, Find Me Guilty is so ludicrous and absurd that it just has to be true.

At the heart of this film's success is the performance of Vin Diesel. Starring as Jackie DiNoscio, Diesel is in pretty much every shot aside from the brief moments shown from the prosecution's discussions about the case. Otherwise, this is Diesel picture. Casual, likable, and magnanimous, Diesel easily sells DiNoscio as a man who can be rooted for without endorsing what he did in his life. We see him as an honest and laid back who is one of the few men caught up in this trial who admits what he has done. There is no hiding that he is a bad man who did a lot of wrong, but DiNoscio is uninterested in hiding that information. Instead, the trial is personal for him as he tries to defend himself (and his friends as a by-product due to the nature of the charges) and examine how some of the people he trusted could betray him by testifying. Wearing his heart on his sleeve, Diesel nails Jackie in the more emotional scenes of cross-examining his cousin and in the more comical moments of him playing up his charm to the jury. In all, Diesel manages to make this mobster into a man who the audience is comfortable rooting for, which is perhaps the great accomplishment one could give his acting. He is honest, he is raw, and above all, he is intensely real. Diesel shows all sides of this man - his anger, his philandering, his drug use, his drug dealing, and his love of friends and family alike - and makes him into a genuine and, somehow, good hearted person.

A lot of this is due to the film's great script that is very natural. Sidney Lumet's films obviously ride on the actors and the natural dialogue given to them with Find Me Guilty being no exception. The film is not one that is ever particularly stagy and the dialogue captures this perfectly. Jokes delivered by Diesel or one-liners rely on his natural charisma in part, but also in the film's dialogue that makes these lines never come off as written. Instead, they include the imperfections, the awkward phrasing, pace, and delivery, of a natural in-the-moment story or joke. In a similar vein, the script manages to balance this ambitious endeavor of showing the lengthiest trial in the history of the federal courts quite nicely. The film never feels crowded or abbreviated. It includes the important moments, the important conversations, and the important characters, without ever allowing the picture be weighted down with too much information. Rather, it shows us what we need to know, shows how it fits in, and then never belabors the point or clutters the rest of the film. It is an unfussy, focused, and stripped back that covers what it needs to without ever dipping into excess. It builds the character of Jackie - both personally and professionally - and it shows the important days of the trial, the crucial conversations, and the relevant cases. It is a film that may be slowly paced and possibly overlong, but it is not filled with much clutter whatsoever, making it one that is hard to argue should have been cut down.

What really captures the eccentricity of this film perfectly is often the way in which Lumet opts to capture the action. Typically, courtroom dramas are shot with a heavy array of close-ups or medium shots. While this is occasionally still true in Find Me Guilty, Lumet largely relies upon a handheld camera or extreme high-angle shots to showcase the action in and out of the courtroom. Deep focus in the prison shows Jackie walk into his cell in the distance as other inmates closer to the camera mill about on their own. The same in the courtroom shows defendants as they laugh or fidget in their seats. In the hallway, a handheld camera gets stuck behind a crowd of observers as they all cram into the elevator with the deep focus giving us the belief that we too are stuck behind this massive throng of people. In the car as Jackie is transported over, the handheld camera whips between Jackie and the cops like a person's head would. As Jackie argues his case, Lumet often uses the aforementioned high-angle shot, creating a feeling of the audience being no different than another observer, sitting high up in the rafters of the courtroom. The same is continued in the prosecutors office with Lumet's high-angle shots creating a fly-on-the-wall experience.