Review of Primal Fear (1996) by Brendan C — 01 Feb 2013

Well my rating is actually 85%, just like the user rating. This was a really addicting movie to watch. I kept watching it on my phone in an airport on Netflix. I at one point was walking towards the bathroom watching this on my phone, because it was so good. I was at the edge of my seat during the entire 2nd half of the movie. The first half was a little slow, but still really good. I find that slower crime films are more suspenseful, because they help build up for the more awesome stuff at the end. That is exactly what this film did.

This is the film that made Edward Norton a well known actor. I find that he usually plays the same role, but in this one, he was so different then his later stuff. He played a boy that was kind of wimpy almost, and the exact type of guy you would expect to be innocent. he has a stutter, and a quiet voice, with a slight accent. His character's name is Aaron, which was different from his usual role, but not a big stretch however. He also played Roy. Roy is Aaron's 2nd personality, and is very evil, and brutal. He is the one that killed the priest. He takes over Aaron, and causes him to do very violent things, which afterwards he blacks out, and doesn't remember a thing. Why Edward Norton is so good in this film, is because he plays a boy with multiple personality disorder. He plays two different people in one. Both personality's are entirely different from each other, which is why he is so good in this. He did a similar thing in Fight Club. In that movie he also played a guy that had an alter-ego, or a 2nd personality. That was his 2nd best performance, but this is his best. I won't blow the ending, because it's really good.

Richard Gere plays Martin Vail, a defense lawyer. Martin is disliked because he defends criminals, which many defense attorneys are for that same reason. It's a real life cliche that you see with defense attorneys. But he really believes that Aaron is innocent, but eventually thinks he is innocent on the grounds of temporary insanity. He doesn't learn about Aaron's illness until later in the film. By the time he learns about it he has already pleaded innocent, and he doesn't think he can change his plea in the middle of the trial. He has a very intense case that he wants to win. He hurts others around him to help Aaron, but he believes he is doing the right thing. It is one of those conflicts that you see a lot in movies, where there isn't a right thing to do.

The film was very graphic, and the murder of the priest was brutal, and really disturbing. He was stabbed several dozen times, and had many other things happen to him when he was killed. However you hate him after you learn what he made Aaron do on tape. That was also a disturbing, and upsetting thing, that I won't say what it is so you can be surprised. The fact that the murder was so awful, made the emotions you get during the whole film more intense, and it gives you more of them. The disturbing part of this film makes it hard to watch, but also makes it so you want justice to be done even more so. They really do make you wonder weather or not Aaron is guilty for the first half of the film, but you are never entirely sure until the end. There were certain things that happened with Aaron in the trial that were predictable, and I found that I could predict what the last scene would be. I liked it that it was slightly predictable, because then you start to feel like I know whats going to happen, but I don't know when and how. That is why this movie is so good.