Review of The Verdict (1982) by John S — 01 Apr 2012

The Verdict works well enough as an entertaining courtroom drama, but sometimes you want a film to go beyond the conventions of cinema as simple escapism. Sometimes you want it to bury its heals down unto the mud as the story moves along, feeling as though you are being given something more than frosting with no cake. To hell with it. Skip the cake, I want something hardier than that, I want meat and this is only frosting.

I'm supposing that much of the blame, or acclaim (however it is you view the picture), belongs to the director, Sidney Lumet, who, earlier in his career gave us such interesting stories as 12 Angry Men and Dog Day Afternoon. Both films accentuating the character more than the mundane plot devices which were meant by the writers to propel the celluloid at full speed. Both had a sense of justice -- one more orthodox than the other, but justice nonetheless. Here we have another story of justice seen through the eyes of a struggling alcoholic lawyer played for our sympathies by screen legend Paul Newman.

I'm not going to trash on Newman, he's a fine actor, but not in this role. How can I say that when so many laud his performance as a masterful work of artistic brilliance in the face of cinema history. Easy, I just did. Instead of making the character interesting by keeping the guys losing qualities throughout the film, we are immediately handed plot point number one where our lawyer grows a fleshy heart after witnessing the state of his client (a comatose bed-bound vegetable who exists only by the grace of a life support machine). If I wanted to feel all warm hearted inside, I'll watch Sleepless in Seattle. It's as though the director and actors lost balls in the process of making this film and felt as though we had to perform a miracle and turn this guy into a saint if we were ever to get behind him and root him on to victory. When you look at it that way, it's simply a generic sports film in another arena.

The best character in the film was James Mason's rival lawyer, who appears to my eyes to be less of made up character and more of what you'd naturally expect from a working professional. I don't know about you, but if I'm going to trial for whatever reason, the guy who represents me, I want him to be the biggest, meanest, ugliest guy around and not someone who constantly has his nose buried in an ethics book (I know it's a horrible thing to say, but hey, do you want to win or don't you?).

As far as writer Mamet is concerned, this may be one of his lesser works, having little in the way of twists which we have come to expect from him, and more of a mainstream effort on his behalf. That being said, I cannot be completely sure as where to blame the author in this story. Mamet's direction is so sharp and quick witted, something sorely missed from Lumet's helming of this ship. I feel as though this might have not been the route which the writer would have taken the film, directotialy. I would like to have seen what he would have done with his own words in the stead of someone else.

So, when it comes down to it, is The Verdict a bad film? No. It was quite entertaining. But sometimes entertaining just doesn't cut it. Sometimes I want to chew on what I've been served and not simply swallow it down and have it pass through my system. There's a time and a place for desert. But please, not until after dinner.