Top Courtroom Movies

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I just picked up Primal Fear on Blu-ray last week. It was very, very sharp and pretty.



Bright light. Bright light. Uh oh.
Several have been mentioned that I would list. There are also some where the trial may not be in the forefront but is very spectacular, and those would include The Caine Mutiny (1954), A Matter of Life and Death and Paths of Glory. Holden mentioned The Devil and Daniel Webster which is awesome, but the entire trial lasts less than 15 minutes. I was going to add The People Vs. Larry Flynt but it was already mentioned once. Of the ones not named yet, I'd have to go with Whose Life is it Anyway?, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Breaker Morant, King & Country, Fury (1936), Compulsion, The Life of Emile Zola, Counsellor at Law and The Court Martial of Billy Mitchell. There are several more, but those came to mind first.
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We saw the 50's version of 12 Angry Men in high school and it really held our attention. It was a very cool movie. We saw it in speech class. To hold sophomores' attention for a whole 50 min is pretty impressive for a black-and-white movie. It had a lot of substance.



All good people are asleep and dreaming.
The Lady from Shanghai not mentioned.

In general I hate courtroom movies, it's the same tired crap over and over.

Defender/Prosecutor; objection your honor! the defense/prosecution is badgering the witness!

Judge; overruled! sustained! order! I will have order in this court!
Judge pounds gavel.

Courtroom audience; OOOHHH!!!
Woman screaming and then passing out.

Last second witnesses that change the entire case.

P.S. I do realize that The Lady from Shanghai has almost all those clichés in it.



I HATE Lawyer movies, any movie that portrays a lawyer as a hero has lost all credibility for me right off the bat
Why? Lawyers can't be good people?



A quote from The War of the Roses: "What do you call 500 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? A good start."

"We've" been known to use that quote quiet often...
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I'm gonna throw Erin Brockovich out there as a runner up.
I don't really have a favorite movie, but for tv I love me some Eli Stone.
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So many good movies, so little time.
Sidney Lumet has produced a pretty good courtroom trilogy with :

1. 12 Angry Men (1957 ) where he looks at how prejudice could affect the outcome of a trial

2. The Verdict (1982) where he looks at the little guy up against the system.

3. Find Me Guilty (2006) where he looks at how fame, celebrity or personality could affect the outcome of a trial.

Amazingly, the movies are separated by 49 years.


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A Few Good Men



I've always wanted to see if Hollywood could make a good court film that actually followed real court procedure, where the prosecution has first to prove its case, followed then by the defense; where the judge, not the prosecutor or defense attorney, tells witnesses when they can step down; and where the prosecutor gets two chances to influence the jury in final arguments. In real courts, the prosecutor does the first closing argument to the jury, the defense then gives its arguments, and then the prosecutor gets to come back and rebut what the defense said. I've always thought the actual framework of real court procedure would add to the drama of movie trials.

Anyway, drawing on memories of some films I haven't seen for years, I would think Anatomy of a Murder comes the closest to a realistic trial primarily because as I reacall the guy playing the judge was a real judge. Plus they go through some of the real motions of discovery and introduction of evidence and very realistic prepping of witnesses. But mostly because George C. Scott as chief prosecutor falls on the sword of one of the fundamental maxims of trial lawyers--never ask a witness a question that you don't already know the answer to! Good lawyers win by researching and planning their cases, not by voicing assumptions in the courtroom. Plus it was a good story, well acted, and had a great musical score.

I think Judgment at Nurenburg had some realistic moments; certainly it was a good drama. I suspect The Caine Mutiny court martial was fairly in line with real courts martial. Certainly that was the case in the TV movie The Trial of Gen. George Armstrong Custer, which was written by an amateur historian who was a lawyer who spent his career in the Adjudent General's corps of the US Army. He knew court martial procedures backwards and forwards and used only the actually testimony from survivors of the Little Big Horn as testimony in the imagined trial.

I don't know how true it was to British jurisprudence, but Witness for the Prosecution is one of the best courtroom dramas ever. Another outstanding courtroom drama is Inherit the Wind, although there's hardly a true word about the real Scopes trial in the whole film. Like a thrown rock skipping across a pond, it touches a fact every once in awhile, but it doesn't begin to tell the true story behind that trial. Like in real life it began as a bid by the local chamber of commerce to draw attention to the town in hopes of giving it an edge over others in that state at attracting investment. As a good citizen, Scopes volunteered to be the one charged even though he was not the one actually teaching the science class the day it discussed Darwinism. It did end with him being fined a few dollars, after which he became a successful geologist with an oil company. Problem was, the bid for attention backfired for the town; didn't bring in the investors, who mostly put their money into neighboring towns.

12 Angry Men was a great play and a great film, but had the judge known what was going on in the jury room--especially Henry Fonda's look-alike knife--he would have declared a mistrial.

But the movie trial that has always impressed me as being the most like real life is in the little known film The Outrage in which Paul Newman playing a Mexican bandit is charged with killing a man and raping his wife. Not so much because of the trial procedure; you see little of that in the film. But because three different witnesses tell three different versions of the crime--none of which, you later learn, are true. In real trials, eye-witnesses sometimes tell such different stories that you wonder if they're talking about the same incident.

The other most realistic and entertaining trial film is really about the kangaroo court leading to a lynching in The Oxbow Incident. It's a powerful story with some powerful performances that illustrates better than 12 Angry Men the different motives and baggage that jurors can bring to a case and how "facts" can be confused and distorted.

The most fun courtroom scene, however, is the murder trial in Will Rogers' 1934 classic, Judge Priest. Two very funny trial scenes occur in The Art of Love (1965) and After the Fox (1966), with the latter the better of the two by far since it's Peter Sellers who's on trial.

Incidentally, I remember reading about some European-made film (After the Fox, The Pink Panther, something entirely different?) in which the director discovers late in the process (maybe after the film is released) that he has two different men playing the same judge in the courtroom scenes. The story as I recall is that a local citizen (I think Italian but it may have been France) is hired among the extras on location and given a minor role as a judge. Except on one of the days he's scheduled for a scene they're shooting but there's something else he's got to do that day. So his brother takes his place! Next day, the original "judge" is back on the set for additional shots. Wish I could remember the film, because it's a great trivia piece.



12 Angry Men has got to be one of the top courtroom movies of all time.



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Music box and To kill a Mockingbird. Top 2 only!



A time to kill is also a good film, and suprisingly Mathew does a solid job, not as good as Donald and Samuel L. but solid. The plot is great,and it`s nicely filmed and it has some good speeches.
And of course the great Tim Robins has a film that is worth mentioning "Dead man walking" for me was great. Two great performances by Penn and Sarandon, a nice story and a good end to it all.
The accused with Jodie Foster and Kelly McGillis is also for me one of the great courtroom films, a realist approach to the whole story, two good performances by the leading ladies and good direction.



a few good men! I wanted to become a jag lawyer after watching that. Also, Tom cRuise was cool back then...



oh, and one more, the Client with Susan Saranden/Brad Renfro was great too! But I think Renfro died recently....