From airing social injustices in To Kill a Mocking Bird to providing a stage for Jack Nicholson to chew the scenery in A Few Good Men, the law-themed film has become an enduringly popular genre. Good lawyers, bad lawyers, corrupt lawyers, plucky idealistic lawyers facing impossible odds—they’ve all been shown on the silver screen. Enigma Solicitors’ Steven Smith has taken a look through the most memorable English-language legal films to produce a top-20 list.
The Firm (1993) (USA): John Grisham is the Stock Aitken Waterman of the legal thriller novel.
The Firm is often considered Grisham’s best novel by literature’s equivalent of Bananarama fans.
Unashamedly trashy and with a star-studded cast that includes Gene Hackman, Ed Harris, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Gary Busey, an Oscar-nominated Holly Hunter, David Strathairn, Hal Holbrook, Julia Hayes, Jerry Weintraub and Wilford Brimley, Tom Cruise’s newly-qualified lawyer somehow manages to outwit not only the corrupt firm he works for but also the FBI and the mafia, the whole time avoiding the notice of Hollywood’s version of the SRA.
Directed with aplomb by Sydney Pollack (Tootsie, Out of Africa), The Firm compels you to keep watching, even if you need to take a shower afterwards to wash the cheese off.
Entertainment with a capital E, picking fault with this film is like doing the same to Bananarama’s “Robert De Niro’s Waiting”—it’s doable but don’t you have better things to do?
Breaker Morant (1980) (Australia): Perhaps best known for Driving Miss Daisy, The Fringe Dwellers and Tender Mercies, Bruce Beresford’s adaptation of true story of an English (Edward Woodward) and two Australian soldiers (Bryan Brown and Lewis Fitzgerald) who fought in the Boer War ranks among the finest cinematic courts-martial.
Nearing the end of the Boer War, after the death of a German missionary, do three British Empire soldiers find themselves being made scapegoats of colonial policy to appease the German Empire? Personal revenge or an act of war, as the blurb on the back of the DVD says?
Different from most modern legal films in that the defendants are guilty of the crimes they are charged with committing—and modern in the sense uniformed soldiers are involved in a guerilla conflict without a formal frontline or uniformed enemies—their defence circles the wagons around their actions being officially-sanctioned policy from Lord Kitchener, with a green-behind-the-ears provincial Australian lawyer (Jack Thompson) representing them in the court-martial, him being given short notice to prepare.
Somewhat spoilt by the broad brushstrokes used to characterise the British bigwigs, Breaker Morant remains a taut and well-acted film.
Liar Liar (1997) (USA): Jim Carrey’s bounce-back film after the too-dark-for-wholesome-fun-for-the-whole-family of The Cable Guy, Liar Liar opens with a scene in which Carrey’s young son is telling his class what his dad does for a living. “He’s a liar,” the boy says, with the teacher replying, “A— A Liar? Oh, I’m sure you don’t mean a liar.” The son explains, “Well, he wears a suit and goes to court and talks to the judge,” the teacher saying, “Oh, I see—you mean he’s a lawyer.”
Carrey’s on-screen son no longer believes a word his ambitious, divorced father says. After his dad misses his birthday party the son makes a wish, hoping that for a single day that his dad can’t lie. Much gurning ensues as Carrey struggles with not being able to tell even the whitest lie, let alone represent a client in a divorce hearing with a case that’s built on dubious grounds.
Carrey propels the plot forward with his trademark manic physical humour, waltzing the film to its inevitable saccharine ending.
Something of a modern classic, if modern classic means well-crafted and entertaining fluff.
The Winslow Boy (1948) (UK): No, sir, they don’t make ‘em like this anymore! A film adaptation of a play by Sir Terrance Rattigan based loosely on a true story.
After a boy is expelled from a naval college for being accused of stealing a postal order, his father attempts to clear his son’s name. The son (Neil North) is found guilty by an internal inquiry and the father (Cedric Hardwicke) is asked to remove the boy from the college. Instead, he believes his son to be wrongfully accused and after much chattering by the chattering classes, media attention and even a kerfuffle in the House of Commons, the case comes to court. The father pays for the best barrister money has to offer (Robert Donat) and we’re treated to one of cinema’s finest courtroom scenes when the Donat questions North.
Perhaps channeling Norse mythology, achieving justice exacts a heavy price from those seeking it, rendering any happy ending bittersweet at best. It was all fields around here when they last made films like this, so it was. Top stuff.
Recently remade starring Jeremy Northam and Nigel Hawthorne.
A Cry in the Dark (1988) (Australia): Schoolboys have been blaming dogs for eating their missing homework for decades. Sometimes the dog was guilty, usually it wasn’t, and it’s synonymous with a convenient excuse.
A Cry in the Dark is based on the true story of an Australian couple, the Chamberlains (played by Meryl Streep and Sam Neill), whose baby was killed by a wild dog, with the mother being found guilty of murder and the subject of a media-inspired national hate campaign before an appeals court overturned the decision.
The slow-burning film takes the time to initially build the case against the couple—based on circumstantial evidence and the way they fail to conform to national media expectations of grieving parents—before, with considerable attention to detail, breaking it down as evidence that supports the couple comes to light.
Somehow unable to put the grief of the Chamberlains at centre of the film, there’s a focus instead events that led to the miscarriage of justice, which stifles the film, lending it an almost documentary air.
A worthy film, with Streep being nominated for a best-actress Oscar.
Next: 15-11
Enigma Solicitors’ Flickr page now includes an album of photographs from last weekend’s South Devon Half Marathon, in which one of Enigma’s partners, Neil Mercer, competed.
After six months of training, 
With the 
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