...And Justice for All (1979)
…And Justice for All (1979)
DVD9 | VIDEO_TS | NTSC, 16:9 (720x480) VBR | 01:58:55 | 8.02 Gb
Audio: English AC3 5.1 @ 448 Kbps, Portuguese AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps | Subs: English, French, Portuguese, Spanish
Genre: Drama, Satire
DVD9 | VIDEO_TS | NTSC, 16:9 (720x480) VBR | 01:58:55 | 8.02 Gb
Audio: English AC3 5.1 @ 448 Kbps, Portuguese AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps | Subs: English, French, Portuguese, Spanish
Genre: Drama, Satire
Norman Jewison's blackly satirical look at the American justice system has gained in stature as one of the more incisive social commentaries of its time. Al Pacino plays Arthur Kirkland, an incorruptible attorney who attempts to initiate reforms in the Maryland justice system. Kirkland is haunted by the fates of two past clients, one of whom committed suicide in jail; the other is still alive but is locked up on a trumped-up traffic violation. The ability of power and money to distort the pursuit of justice becomes all too clear as Kirkland finds out how deeply the rot has spread. He is ultimately blackmailed into defending a repulsive judge (John Forsythe) accused of rape, and faces a crisis of conscience. Pacino's and Forsythe's performances are intense and powerful. Many critics found the film biting and almost painful in its razor-sharp indictment of the justice system, while others declared the script too outrageous.Synopsis by Don Kaye, Allmovie.com
Here's an angry comedy crossed with an expose and held together by one of those high-voltage Al Pacino performances that's so sure of itself we hesitate to demur. Pacino plays an aggressive young Baltimore lawyer who has worked within the system for 12 years or so – he's not a reformer fresh out of law school – but who, during the course of this movie, is driven to advise the American system of jurisprudence to stick its head where the sun don't shine.
Pacino's immediate inspiration is a judge named Fleming (John Forsythe) who rather unexpectedly becomes his client. Forsythe looks marvelously like a judge. He has the razor-cut grey hair and the tired, thoughtful eyes and the gentleman's vague sneer when addressing a lawyer in his courtroom.
We get the impression that he saved himself a lot of time, early in his time on the bench, by resolving never to allow considerations of simple humanity to interfere with his handling of a case.
That angers Pacino, because Pacino has a client who has been in jail for months because of Forsythe. The client, as it happens, is innocent. Everyone seems agreed on that point. But the client was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and was filed away in a cell during a hiccup in standard police procedure, and cannot get out again until Pacino and Forsythe can agree on several meaningless technicalities.
They cannot. Forsythe seems to take a quiet sadistic pleasure in frustrating Pacino while his client goes through a crack-up in jail. Meanwhile, Pacino's life is complicated on other fronts. It is, in fact, complicated on too many other fronts: "…and Justice for All" has so many characters doing so many things to, with and against Pacino that it's a triumph of film making when all the stories end in the same movie.
There is a girlfriend, and a neurotic law partner, and another nutty client, and a stark raving mad senior judge (Jack Warden) who indulges his suicidal impulses by eating his lunch on a fifth-floor window ledge and seeing if his helicopter will fly without gasoline.
These subplots are all thrown into the story's way without much regard as to whether they're serious and subtle or broad and comic; the movie is a compromise involving various approaches to the material. But Pacino's performance forces a kind of logic on the events.
We somewhat suspiciously accept the movie's swings of tone because Pacino remains consistent, and because he seems to remember what the basic issues are even when the movie detours into irrelevant episodes like the helicopter flight.
Then things tighten up just in time: When the movie seems about to become a series of sketches, it turns out that Forsythe is a prime suspect in the brutal rape and beating of a young girl.
Is he innocent, as he claims? Guilty? He wants Pacino to handle his defense: Inevitably, it's going to look as if the fix is in unless the defense is conducted by a lawyer who's clearly on record as despising Forsythe.
But . . . what if Forsythe's guilty? What does Pacino do then? What he does is borrowed from "Network" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and other recent celebrations of the manic rebel personality in confrontation with the immoral establishment. The closing courtroom scenes are constructed as a machine to make the audience cheer, and the machine works.
Whether it works a little cynically is left for the audience to decide: "…and Justice for All" has been so many things and struck so many tones by the ending that it's not a statement, it's an anthology. Maybe, when Pacino's courtroom scene gathers force, we just forget the farce and soap opera and romantic comedy that went before, and take the scene as self-contained.Review by Roger Ebert
IMDB 7,4/10 from 18 483 users
Wiki
Director: Norman Jewison
Writers: Valerie Curtin, Barry Levinson
Cast: Al Pacino, Jack Warden, John Forsythe, Lee Strasberg, Jeffrey Tambor, Christine Lahti, Craig T. Nelson, Thomas G. Waites and other
...And Justice for All (1979)
...And Justice for All (1979)
...And Justice for All (1979)
...And Justice for All (1979)
...And Justice for All (1979)
...And Justice for All (1979)
...And Justice for All (1979)
...And Justice for All (1979)
...And Justice for All (1979)
...And Justice for All (1979)
...And Justice for All (1979)
...And Justice for All (1979)
...And Justice for All (1979)
...And Justice for All (1979)
...And Justice for All (1979)
Special Features:
Full length audio commentary with director Norman Jewison
"Norman Jewison: The Testimony of the Director" featurette
"Barry Levinson: Cross Examining the Screenwriter" featurette
Deleted Scenes
"88 Minutes" sneak preview
"Damages" TV Pilot Episode
Theatrical Trailer
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