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The Verdict (1982)

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34 out of 39 people found the following comment useful :-
one of the best legal dramas ever, 20 June 2002
Author: Ajtlawyer from Richland, WA

"The Verdict" is simply one of the best legal dramas ever done. Of course much of what happens in the movie is unrealstic and wouldn't happen in a real case but the movie isn't a study in courtroom procedure (watch the fantastic "Anatomy of a Murder" for that)it is a study about redemption and in that respect it excells.

This movie captures Paul Newman's finest screen performance and that alone makes it an important movie. The scenes where Newman hardly says anything show how great an actor he is---his look of self-loathing when he's thrown out of the funeral home, his palsied hand and lost look when he's trying to drink his whiskey, his panic when Charlotte Rampling lambasts him for being a failure. Then throw into that his terrific courtroom scenes, his arguments with the judge in chambers, it is just a sensational performance all around.

The level of acting is high all around in this movie. James Mason was Oscar nominated for playing the silky smooth, totally corrupt defense attorney. Jack Warden shines as Frank Galvin's world-weary former law partner. Lindsey Crouse has a small role as a nurse but is given the most powerful and dramatic moment in the entire movie. Her cross-examination by James Mason is where the movie really shines and shows that Paul Newman can keep his ego in check. How many movies give the most powerful and dramatic moment of the film to one of the secondary players? How many lead actors would be willing to just sit there quiet in a chair while a bit player and the second male lead share the big moment? It was a bold decision by both Newman, director Sidney Lumet and writer David Mamet and it is unforgettable.

The movie shows the two extremes of the practice of law. James Mason's win-at-all-costs cheating and Paul Newman getting so emotionally wrapped up in the case that he is no longer protecting his client's interests and instead is out to settle his own personal scores. A great, great movie.

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35 out of 42 people found the following comment useful :-
Newman amazing as drunken lawyer in story of redemption..., 10 March 1999

Author: Donald J. Lamb from Philadelphia, PA

The title of this movie is deceiving. THE VERDICT suggests a courtroom drama, something like TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, or INHERIT THE WIND. It does have some riveting court scenes, but what happens outside of court and to Paul Newman is the real attraction here. The title not only refers to the inevitable decision of the important case of the film, but also to how the Newman character is going to live the rest of his life. Should he sell out and take the easy settlement, or take the highly regarded archdiocese of Boston to court for real justice. These are the questions Newman must face in this profound drama that seems more like a picture of the 70's than an 80's film.

Director Sidney Lumet has dealt with the legal system before in his first film, 12 ANGRY MEN. He takes it to a more personal level and Paul Newman, one of the finest actors of the past 40 years, is the person to do it. He is a legend and he bares his soul as attorney Frank Galvin, a lonely, corrupt drunk whose license to practice law is hanging by a thread. Jack Warden plays his trusty assistant who gets him a case that could help Frank change his life. Warden, however, has had enough.

Newman plays an excellent drunk, even cracking an egg into an 8am beer to start his day. This is a dim looking movie, shot during a cold winter in Boston. There are no great shots, or even any emotionally-rousing speeches, but this is Lumet's style. It is plodding and we see into the life of a lawyer on the ropes. James Mason is perfect as the slimy defense lawyer. Newman is constantly underestimated because of past failures. He is a drunk, but he still has some tricks up his sleeve.

NOTE: Look closely at the closing argument given by Newman. In the background, you can glimpse a then-unknown Bruce Willis.

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25 out of 29 people found the following comment useful :-
The difference between what is legal and what is just, 13 November 2002
Author: budikavlan from Irving, TX

I like that this film shows how the criminal justice system, solid though it is, has cracks that can prevent justice being done, and that the people participating in it have to have the courage to recognize them. This film has turned out to be a seminal one: legal drama has turned overwhelmingly to rumination of the moral interstices of the law like the one portrayed here. Without "The Verdict," we wouldn't have "The Practice." Gone are the days when all of Perry Mason's clients were innocent.

Paul Newman's performance has been justifiably enshrined in the pantheon of Circumstances When The Academy Dropped The Ball. But what made the film a truly emotional performance for me was Lindsay Crouse as the pivotal witness. The entire ensemble was flawless, as was the incredible atmosphere. "The Verdict" is probably too serious for some movie fans, and that's OK--no film can please everyone. But if you like to be given something to think about by your entertainments, this is the film for you.

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26 out of 31 people found the following comment useful :-
The Best of Newman, 16 June 2002
Author: jjh6519 from United States

I have seen this movie, on screen and as a video, many times. Each time, it gets better. This is no doubt the best acting by Paul Newman in his career. Why he didn't get the Oscar for this role, but instead got it for the lackluster "The Color of Money", is beyond me. The movie is actually about redemption, or the attempt to be redeemed.

His interpretation of Frank Galvin, a desperate, conniving, down-to-the-last-case attorney, is fascinating and totally convincing. And he has a fantastic supporting cast -- from Jack Warden as his partner, Charlotte Rampling as his chance for romantic redemption, Milo O'Shea as the corrupt judge, Lindsay Crouse as his surprising ace-up-his-sleeve, and most of all, in a landmark supporting actor role, James Mason as the seemingly distinguished and respected defense attorney.

And I found the direction by Sidney Lumet to be, once again, outstanding. Lumet has such a long list of great movies that you wonder why he has never won an Oscar or been given an AFI Lifetime Achievement award.

This is a riveting movie -- about the law, but mainly about the flawed nature of the human beings who are entrusted with it. Please hear Newman, as Frank Galvin, on his last, crippled, despairing leg, give the summation to the case. It needs to be carved in marble somewhere. David Mamet, who wrote the screenplay, deserves accolades for how he was able to hand Paul Newman such a moving summation. The summation is about life, not just the law. It is a masterpiece, worth seeing the entire movie for.

Most of all, it is Newman's Finest Hour.

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20 out of 26 people found the following comment useful :-
In Primis, 19 June 2002

Author: Robert J. Maxwell (rmax304823@yahoo.com) from Deming, New Mexico

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

This one really isn't to be missed, certainly among the best of the courtroom dramas.

The acting. Well, first of all, nobody is bad. The most nearly negligible performance is by Wesley Addy, who at least looks the part of the elegant doctor and who is a competent actor. The other principals are outstanding. Charlotte Rampling with that odd face -- sultriness imposed kicking and screaming upon boniness -- is unusually good and even manages to project a kind of believable guilty remorse, which has never been her strong suit. James Mason is (almost)unflappable as Concannon, attorney for the defense. Marvelous, the way he puts quotation marks around the word "expert" while questioning the plaintiff's witness. Edward Binns is stolid as the savvy but moral bishop who wants to wrap things up without making waves. "What is the truth?", he asks Newman. Jack Warden is plumply likable, as always. He's seems to have aged more than Binns, with whom he'd worked a quarter of a century earlier in "Twelve Angry Men." Lindsay Crouse in a small but crucial role is appealingly Irish. Milo O'Shea is sliminess itself. I don't know why, perhaps his impish accent, but there is always something amusing about him, as if unable to quite shake what Erving Goffman called "role distance," the knowledge that he's playing a part accompanied by an awareness of the absurdity of doing so. Even Bruce Willis is in this, playing a visitor to the courtroom. I was an atmosphere person in a Boston courtroom too, in "From the Hip" -- a far superior movie. (Ask anybody.) And Paul Newman is flawless. Robert Redford was supposed to play Frankie Galvin, but he wouldn't have been up to the part. The role requires the compelling anguish that Newman brings to it, and he does it perfectly. Redford is much too cool for that. I will mention just one scene of Newman's that is emblematic. He stands in his darkened office -- Warden watching soundlessly from the background -- and calls the defendants' law firm about a settlement they have already withdrawn. He paces around talking into the phone, hardly able to breathe, congested with not just mucous but self hatred, cajoling them, pounding on the desk with his knuckles, filled with an empty bravado. Redford couldn't do it. Practically nobody could do it.

Almost everything fits together perfectly in this film. Sidney Lumet opens with a shot of Newman alone in silhouette playing a pinball machine in a Boston bar, drinking beer. The pinball game serves as a token for the trajectory of his life during the course of the film. Wardrobe: first-rate. How "New England." Multi-layered dark clothing, (in Newman's case black), woolly and fussy. Sound: excellent. Little noises, hardly noticeable, form almost a background score. The old wooden floors creak when people step on them. An example of one or two good creaks: the scene in Concannon's office when he is welcoming Laura back to the law. Twirled-up telephone lines squeak when someone pulls on them. The tinkling of ice cubes in liquor glasses. The heavy breathing of nervous or defeated people. The slamming of ancient desk drawers. Garbage trucks whining in the city streets at dawn. Production design: as good as it gets. Everything looks old, as if it has been used and lived in for years, not shabby but burnished with age, all mahogany wood and scarlet carpets. Lighting and photography: up there with the best. Most scenes are dark -- it's midwinter in Boston -- but not too dark, cleverly lighted. The snow in the streets is literally blue, as if it had just leaped out of an impressionist landscape. Tree branches glisten with moisture on slick night-time streets. Tinsel draped along a bar ceiling twinkles with fraudulent joy.

The weakness? The movie is so good I hate to mention it, but the script leaves something to be desired. It almost betrays the characters. I don't mind the legal absurdities so much. Okay, so things would never really happen this way. The judge would have to grant a continuance and so forth. It's not so much that as the motivation and the set speeches that are bothersome, especially Newman's, and they're critical. The banter and small talk are fine. Mamet's small talk is almost always fine. But Newman's conversion from a drunken, cynical ambulance chaser to a principled attorney of reawakened morals in the course of two-minute photo session with a comatose patient is patently unbelievable. Where did all that conscience (if that's what it is?) suddenly come from? He flops backwards as if stunned. Why? The script does its best to back up his epiphany. The images of his patient develop as a real person, not just a dollar sign, on the Polaroid photos, a mirror image of what's going on in his mind. But as Warden repeatedly points out, his job is to win some money for his clients so they can leave their comatose sister in good care and get on with their lives in Tucson. Instead he turns down the church's offer because he sees a trial as a challenge to his personal pride, as a "means of redemption". (Is that kind of pride a mortal or a venial sin?) He loses sight of what the whole legal process is about because of this self-involvement. It wouldn't be so bad if he realized this, if he found himself in conflict, but in fact he never gives it a thought. Finally, Newman's summation: it sounds as if it had been put together by some high school kid whose homework assignment was to write an essay (of at least two hundred words) about "what life means to me." "I believe there is justice in our hearts," says Newman, more to himself than to the jury. No kidding.

None of this criticism can subtract from all the other virtues of the film. It's among the best of its kind.

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20 out of 26 people found the following comment useful :-
Newman should have won the Oscar for this one., 12 February 2001
Author: joseph t from ohio, usa

If Newman hadn't been up against Ghandi, he probably would have. I think the Academy realized their error and Newman's win for The Color of Money was really for his portrayal of Frank Galvin, in this well-done tale of moral decrepitude and ultimate redemption. Writer Mamet and Director Lumet are into heavy symbolism throughout, with the scene of the developing Poloroids of the victim (the case becomes clear in Galvin's mind), to Galvin's pilfering of a woman's mail to run down a lead on a potential witness. The closing statement of Newman's character to the jury is powerful.

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11 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
an old story, an important question, a great performance by a great actor, 1 April 2006

Author: blanche-2 from United States

I saw "The Verdict" when it was released in 1982 and just watched it again. It is amazing what of the film I retained in memory. Most of what I remembered was the sheer brilliance of Paul Newman. In seeing it the second time, I'm 24 years older, I've worked for attorneys, I've had an experience with the justice system. And still, what I take away from "The Verdict" is the sheer brilliance of Paul Newman. After Matthew McConnaughey made "A Time to Kill," he asked his agents if he could meet Paul Newman. I guess someone told him they were similar. Newman said to him, "This is a time to not take yourself seriously and your work very seriously." When Matthew McConnaughey has a 50+ year career, you'll talk (I'll be gone) - but it's evident that Paul Newman takes his work very seriously indeed.

"The Verdict" is an old story - the drunken attorney who takes a case -think "The People Against O'Hara" for one - but this one has a stunning cast which includes Jack Warden, James Mason, Charlotte Rampling and Lindsay Crouse. And it asks one of life's great questions - what do you do when losing is just not an option? Drunken, disillusioned, ambulance-chasing Frank Galvin takes a slam-dunk hospital negligence case thrown to him by an investigator friend (Warden). His expert witness tells him he can win. So Galvin doesn't tell his client about a lowball offer, takes the thing to trial, loses his star witness, hires a pathetic expert, is reported by his client for failing to give them the offer they would have happily taken - simply put, there's no paddle but if he doesn't get down the river, any hope of reconstituting his life is over. Gone. David Mamet's script stacks everything against Frank but when you're fighting for your life, failure is not an option.

Newman is a wonder with his loser posture and hyperventilation and his desperateness. It's in his voice, it's on his face, it's in his smile, it's in his shaking hands. He's up against James Mason and his huge law firm, a smug, well-dressed bunch who will stop at nothing to win. One might think this type of firm is a cliché; it isn't. One of the characters says it best - "You have no loyalty to anyone, you don't care who you hurt. You're all whores." Unfortunately in real life, all attorneys are pretty much the same, but at least in film we occasionally are shown a decent one. When this film was made, the public had not yet been subjected to the Dream Team, the Robert Blake Case, the Menendez Brothers. But even today, knowing better, you can't help but buy into Newman's frantic sincerity.

The rest of the cast is uniformly excellent, with top honors going to Mason's smooth Concannon and Lindsay Crouse, who gives us the most powerful five minutes of the film with her magnificent performance as the admission nurse.

Is it a manipulative film? As hell. Is it feel good? You betcha. But take it from someone who knows an unfortunate truth - that justice is for the rich who pull in favors and have the money to fight, everyone lies their teeth off, and the jury system is sad - if I can be swept away by "The Verdict" and by Paul Newman's performance (another Oscar he was cheated out of) - you're gonna eat it up.

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12 out of 13 people found the following comment useful :-
One of the best courtroom dramas, 27 June 2005
Author: bkoganbing from Buffalo, New York

I've always believed that actors are drawn to courtroom material because of the inherent conflict within them makes for good drama and good parts. They're quite a few of them in The Verdict.

This has always been my favorite Paul Newman film, it's the one he should have won the Oscar for. His Frank Galvin is not the noblest of creatures, he's a once promising attorney now an alcoholic ambulance chaser. But the skills are still there and he shows them battling tremendous odds. Thirty years earlier Frank Capra could easily have made this the subject of one of his populist dramas.

Newman gets great support from an outstanding cast. James Mason, Jack Warden, Charlotte Rampling, Joe Seneca deliver some outstanding performances. The one I particularly liked here was Milo O'Shea as the corrupt and biased judge.

Most of the great courtroom dramas have been about criminal cases. The Verdict was a landmark film that set the stage for the success of other great films about civil cases, including A Civil Action and Erin Brockovich. Those I don't think would have been made but for the critical and popular success of The Verdict.

Paul Newman was never better on screen.

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12 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
A Classic, 14 September 2000
Author: palmer-4 from la

I love this film, I own a copy and I watch it at least once a year. It's hard to pick a "best work" from Sidney Lumet, Paul Newman or David Mamet, but this film ranks up there for all three. And really, when you say those three names on one film, that says it all, doesn't it?

Newman plays a down and out lawyer, a drunk ambulance chaser whose life changes when he turns down a pultry settlement offer to try a case that he can't possibly win. There are so many great scenes in this film, it's hard to pick a favorite. Possibly, the very end, the ringing phone Paul Newman ignores as he sips on some coffee, rather than whiskey, might be one of the all time greats. The scene sums up the movie so well. My other favorite is a long, single shot where Newman is on the phone trying to get another doctor to testify and Jack Warden paces the room. The camera is at the other end of the room, on the floor and the scene is about five or six minutes long, one continuous shot, beautifully done.

I read a book a couple years ago that covered blunders in film regarding court cases and apparently there were a couple in this one. But this is a film that is so great, so well done, I think Godzilla could have trampled part of Boston and Lumet could have made it believable. Although Cool Hand Luke is my favorite film of all time, The Verdict is my second favorite Newman film. See it if you can.

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11 out of 13 people found the following comment useful :-
a fantastic movie from start to finish--one of the best of the 80s, 12 June 2005

Author: planktonrules from Bradenton, Florida

Although Paul Newman has received MANY accolades for his acting, this movie, to me, stands out as the best of all his many wonderful performances. Newman plays an alcoholic has-been lawyer who has pretty much given up on making a difference. He is an "ambulance chaser" whose only goal is to arrange a quick settlement--regardless of whether or not his clients deserve more or nothing at all (a "nuisance lawyer"). He plays this role exceptionally well and the writing and directing much also be credited.

Out of the blue, he takes a case where the client has a really good case and deserves a very large judgment. However, Newman is planning on just making a quick settlement regardless of whether or not it was fair for anyone. However, over time, for once, he has a hard time living with himself and eventually decides to fight. However, the archdiocese being sued hires a team of top-rate lawyers and Newman finally refuses to back down and take a settlement.

You MUST watch this movie!!!

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