A Puerto Rican youth is on trial for murder, accused of knifing his father to death. The twelve jurors retire to the jury room, having been admonished that the defendant is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Eleven of the jurors vote for conviction, each for reasons of his own. The sole holdout is Juror #8, played by Henry ...
Julia Roberts stars in this legal drama based on the true story of a woman who helped win the largest settlement ever paid in a direct-action lawsuit. Erin Brockovich (Roberts) is a single mother of three who, after losing a personal injury lawsuit, asks her lawyer, Ed Masry (Albert Finney), if he can help her find a job. Ed gives her work as a ...
Adapted by Robert Bolt and Constance Willis from Bolt's hit stage play, A Man for All Seasons stars Paul Scofield, triumphantly repeating his stage role as Sir Thomas More. The crux of the film is the staunchly Catholic More's refusal to acknowledge King Henry VIII (Robert Shaw)'s break from the church to divorce his first wife and marry Anne ...
Farrah Fawcett earned Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for her portrayal of Francine Hughes in the television movie The Burning Bed. The film is structured as a series of flashbacks while Francine's character endures a murder trial after she poured gasoline on her sleeping spouse and burned him to death. Her husband Mickey (Paul Le Mat) drove her ...
Carl Lee Hailey (Samuel L. Jackson) takes the law into his own hands after the legal system fails to adequately punish the men who brutally raped and beat his daughter, leaving her for dead. Normally, a distraught father could count on some judicial sympathy in those circumstances. Unfortunately, Carl and his daughter are black, and the assailants ...
This Steven Spielberg-directed exploration into a long-ago episode in African-American history recounts the trial that followed the 1839 rebellion aboard the Spanish slave ship Amistad and captures the complex political maneuverings set in motion by the event. Filmed in New England and Puerto Rico, the 152-minute drama opens with a pre-credit ...
At the time of its release, Jonathan Demme's Philadelphia was the first big-budget Hollywood film to tackle the medical, political, and social issues of AIDS. Tom Hanks, in his first Academy Award-winning performance, plays Andrew Beckett, a talented lawyer at a stodgy Philadelphia law firm. The homosexual Andrew has contracted AIDS but fears ...
A high-profile slaying becomes the case of an ambitious attorney's career in this legal thriller based on the novel by William Diehl. Richard Gere stars as Martin Vail, a famed defense lawyer who volunteers his services to Aaron Stampler (Edward Norton), a Kentucky teenager charged with the murder of a Chicago archbishop. Covered with blood, Aaron ...
Based on the best-selling novel by Robert Traver (the pseudonym for Michigan Supreme Court justice John D. Voelker), Anatomy of a Murder stars James Stewart as seat-of-the-pants Michigan lawyer Paul Biegler. Through the intervention of his alcoholic mentor, Parnell McCarthy (Arthur O'Connell), Biegler accepts the case of one Lt. Manion (Ben ...
Gene Pitney's hit title song for this courtroom drama became a bigger and more enduring success than the film in which it was repeatedly sung. The story takes place in postwar Germany in the village of Neustadt. A group of four drunken American soldiers come upon a teenage girl, Karin Steinhof (Christine Kaufmann), in the woods outside town. She ...
Directed by Schindler's List screenwriter Steve Zaillian, this courtroom drama is based on a true story and non-fiction book by Jonathan Harr. The case revolves around an incident in 1979 in East Woburn, MA, where two drinking wells supplying water to the town were found to be contaminated with industrial solvents. When toxic waste was discovered ...
Robert Francis is at the center of the story as Willis Keith, a newly-minted ensign assigned to the destroyer/minesweeper U.S.S. Caine during World War II. Soon after his arrival, the ship gets a new captain, Lt. Comdr. Philip Francis Queeg Humphrey Bogart, a tough, no-nonsense veteran officer who tries to turns the crew into proper sailors and ...
Based on a novel by Robert Hichens, The Paradine Case concerns Anna Paradine (Alida Valli), on trial for the murder of her wealthy husband. British barrister Anthony Keane (played by the aggressively American Gregory Peck) takes on the case-and in the process, falls in love with Anna, despite being married himself. Despite his client's protests, ...
Having just recovered from a heart attack, fabled British barrister Sir Wilfred Robards (Charles Laughton) has been ordered by his doctor to give up everything he holds dear-brandy, cigars and especially courtroom cases. Robards' already shaky resolve to follow doctor's orders flies out the window when he takes up the defense of Leonard Vole ...
In this legal drama from director Sydney Pollack, Sally Field stars as Megan, an ambitious newpaper reporter who, based on information from FBI investigator Rosen, played by Bob Balaban, writes a scathing article that implicates Gallagher, a reclusive business-owner played by Paul Newman, in the recent disappearance of a labor leader. When ...
This film is a darkly humorous, determinedly ambiguous adaptation of Alan Dershowitz's book about his successful legal appeal of Claus von Bulow's conviction for the attempted murder of his wife, Martha "Sunny" von Bulow. Sunny (Glenn Close) -- who remains in a "persistent vegetative state" resulting from a suspicious injection of insulin -- ...
Lana Turner takes the lead in the seventh film version of Alexandre Bisson's glossy soap opera. Holly Parker (Turner) is married to respected diplomat Clay Anderson (John Forsythe), but his busy schedule prevents them from seeing each other very often. Distracted and lonely, Holly allows her head to be turned by carefree playboy Phil Benton ...
Alan Paton's classic novel about two fathers coming to terms with personal loss and the emotional scars inflicted on South Africa during the era of apartheid was brought to the screen for a second time with this adaptation, the first major film produced in South Africa after Nelson Mandela's election ended mandatory white rule in that nation. Rev. ...
After the end of World War II, the world gradually became aware of the full extent of the war crimes perpetrated by the Third Reich. In 1948, a series of trials were held in Nuremberg, Germany, by an international tribunal, headed by American legal and military officials, with the intent of bringing to justice those guilty of crimes against ...
Rusty Sabich (Harrison Ford) is a bland, oppressed man who burns with a quiet, corrosive intensity that can flare uncontrollably. A Philadelphia prosecutor, Sabich's fire seems to have one outlet: his job. He loves prosecuting people. Otherwise, his life is dead-ended. He has a loveless marriage to a neurotic woman (Bonnie Bedelia) and an ...
A barely recognizable Meryl Streep plays the real-life Lindy Chamberlain, who for a long period in the early 1980s was the most hated woman in Australia. While visiting the Ayers rock monument in the Outback with her husband Michael (Sam Neill), Lindy notices a dingo creeping into the tent where her baby lies sleeping. Seconds later, the horrified ...
British filmmaker Peter Yates directs Suspect, a suspenseful courtroom drama set in Washington, D.C. After a Supreme Court justice commits suicide and a Justice Department secretary is found dead, a deaf-mute homeless veteran, Carl Wayne Anderson (Liam Neeson), is the suspected killer. Lonely yet dedicated public defender Kathleen Riley (Cher) is ...
"In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate, yet equally important, groups: the police, who investigate crime, and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories." With this pithy but all-inclusive prologue, thus began each hour-long episode of Law & Order, American network television's ...
Not yet a hit, though certainly sustaining decent ratings, Law & Order entered its second season with the first of its many cast changes -- and a spectacular one it was indeed, with Detective Max Greevey being shot down and killed in front of his own house. In truth, George Dzundza, who played Greevey, had already left the series, so his "death" ...
Originally broadcast on HBO, Indictment: The McMartin Trial is a docudrama concerning the infamous McMartin child abuse case. In 1984, seven employees of Los Angeles' prestigious McMartin Preschool, including four members of the McMartin family, were arrested and charged with child abuse and sexual molestation. The film centers on the story of ...
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