Actors: Cher, Dennis Quaid, Liam Neeson, John Mahoney et al.
Director: Peter Yates
Writer: Eric Roth
Cher is an actress who loses herself in a character, her acting was so natural and believable and in most of her scenes in this film she was very good with some excellent acting in the supporting roles by Melamed, Bosco, Kerr. Those who portrayed the homeless people were very good what helped keep this film together. Quaid was also believable in his role and is a fine talent and a good choice as her leading man. I have viewed and enjoyed many of his films. And as we all know neither presented their best here.
I had deferred seeing this film because I did not think Cher would be believable as an attorney. While she hardly presented Riley as the near burned out lawyer who hasn't had a vacation in a year, probably due to poor directing, she was still very good. Mahoney made some mistakes in the delivery of his dialogue on a few occasions but he seemed well suited to his role as did the others, and I enjoyed watching him portray Martin in the sitcom Fraser. Neeson's part had some errors again due to directing. I think he is another fine actor and I have seen a few of his films as well. It appears the film was just a collection of things going on in someone's life and the only thing I saw holding the whole thing together was the key and the crucifix. Then, after having viewed it for the 4th time, I began to notice that the entire film seemed to have been done in reverse, the ending should have been the beginning and vice versa. Having the ending at the beginning gets the viewer interested, then fading out to the events that led to the trial and would have given the film a little more coherence. Of course this is how we typically view a film.
Riley discovers a tape in the victim’s car and goes to the Judge's home, that seemed so out of place, why I thought the film was done in reverse of the events as they actually happened which makes sense when you are unraveling a case. You work backwards from the incident to build an investigation. As someone else mentioned, the cops are shown leaving the scene involving the car early on without even mentioning the tape and a good investigator would have found that right way.
There were noticeable technical flaws in this film. The acting itself is very well done, the directing, writing and editing are what dropped this film from a potential top selling film to a thumbs down. Cher made a flub in her response to Morty when she asked him why he stayed. The intonation of her question did not seem appropriate, although again this could be due to the directing and editing. When they edit a film we do not get to see all that really goes on in the making of that film. There were parts of the film that I thought might have connections to the Jack The Ripper Story, her character at times appeared to look like two of the Ripper victims and might have been part of synchronistic events.
It is your typical whodunit, that's why we enjoy it. The crucifix let's us know it's the same old casting of stones on the innocent and lurking somewhere in the dark is the real killer. I never suspected the Judge. I don't think the relationship between the Juror and Defense Attorney is all that out of place, I think it makes the film more interesting. I purchased this film because I am a Cher fan. Even though it wasn't her best or the best film I have seen, I still got something out of it. What did I get out of it? I was made conscious again of the true meaning behind the cross, that the persecution of the innocent still happens, "we are innocent" and viewing this film came at a perfect time when I had been getting into Erich Fromm and his book, Sane Society, which discusses aspects of the cross and it’s implications in our lives and of course Carl Jung also mentions symbolism in many of his writings as well.
After viewing this film, I found a book published in the mid-1800's that might be connected to this film. The book does not detail events that occurred that may have been connected to parts of it, but I discovered them while doing a search on the name of one of the persons in the book, names that apparently had not been altered by the author as it is a non-fiction book, History of the Lackawanna Valley, a county in Pennsylvania with mirror sites in Hyde County, NC where I lived during my teenage years and where my father and another man took their own lives, the other having blown his head off in the same manner, for which I had been searching the cause.
What makes me even more curious about his film now is, what are the real crimes going on here?
