Sure, Ebert and other failed-novelist intellectuals will cream over this movie ---"Roger, a big thumbs up, its a tough insightful look into the criminal justice system." All it gives you an insight into is the right-wing hysteria of that noted auteur of the courtroom, Sidney Lumet. Once again, he sets up a bogus straw man into order to wax rhapsodic over the forces of law and order. This time, its a monstrous drug dealer (black, of course) who is on trial for killing three police officers. His flamboyant, crazed-radical criminal defense lawyer(is there really any other kind in the world of Hollywood?) whines that the baddie had no choice but to gun down the cops since they were involved in the drug rackets with him and they were aiming to blow him away first.
Of course, this is an absolutely ludicrous argument, but Lumet urges us to take it seriously so that when the conviction comes down, we can rejoice, Himmler-style, in the grandeur of the thin blue line. Old Lumet sets up the old straw man and knocks him down. What a hack.
Probably the most offensive moment in the film comes when our fearless young protagonist, assistant DA Sean Casey (Andy Garcia) meets with the crazed-radical criminal defense attorney Vigoda (Richard Dreyfuss). While they are both in a steam room with wet towels draped over their shoulders (a Roman motif or a bit of unacknowledged homo erotica?), Vigoda confesses that he too has a deep affection for LAW AND ORDER and he solemnly intones, "Sometimes I think that we have to give up on an entire generation and lock them up and throw away the key." Well, you don't need to read to carefully between the lines for the answer to "A generation of whom?" Why those bad minorities of course who Vigoda and Casey agree, sotte voce, must be dealt with harshly, given that their naughty drug dealing and assorted criminality upset National Security State, which of course putters along fine in the face of corporate scandals. The day that Sidney Lumet whines about the corporate scandals that have engulfed our society is the day that I begin to take him seriously.
Sidney Lumet, in The Verdict, Q and A, Prince of the City, and now Night Falls on Manhattan, along with other "tough and gritty" movies, has demonstrated that he a vulgar buffoon is incapable of or unwilling to learn about the American legal system. He fawns upon power, and unspools magic theories about the careful deliberations that attends its use. Our packed prisons are eloquent testimony to the just how much deliberation the powerful exercise when it comes to the lives of the weak.
It the meantime, he endlessly denigrates the criminal defense bar and by extrapolation, those hapless suckers too poor and unconnected to avoid criminal prosecution. No doubt, he is considered part of "liberal Hollywood," and would self-identify himself so. If he is indeed a liberal, the governing assumptions that he buys into show just how little discourse there is in our society, particularly on the criminal justice system.
Of course, this is an absolutely ludicrous argument, but Lumet urges us to take it seriously so that when the conviction comes down, we can rejoice, Himmler-style, in the grandeur of the thin blue line. Old Lumet sets up the old straw man and knocks him down. What a hack.
Probably the most offensive moment in the film comes when our fearless young protagonist, assistant DA Sean Casey (Andy Garcia) meets with the crazed-radical criminal defense attorney Vigoda (Richard Dreyfuss). While they are both in a steam room with wet towels draped over their shoulders (a Roman motif or a bit of unacknowledged homo erotica?), Vigoda confesses that he too has a deep affection for LAW AND ORDER and he solemnly intones, "Sometimes I think that we have to give up on an entire generation and lock them up and throw away the key." Well, you don't need to read to carefully between the lines for the answer to "A generation of whom?" Why those bad minorities of course who Vigoda and Casey agree, sotte voce, must be dealt with harshly, given that their naughty drug dealing and assorted criminality upset National Security State, which of course putters along fine in the face of corporate scandals. The day that Sidney Lumet whines about the corporate scandals that have engulfed our society is the day that I begin to take him seriously.
Sidney Lumet, in The Verdict, Q and A, Prince of the City, and now Night Falls on Manhattan, along with other "tough and gritty" movies, has demonstrated that he a vulgar buffoon is incapable of or unwilling to learn about the American legal system. He fawns upon power, and unspools magic theories about the careful deliberations that attends its use. Our packed prisons are eloquent testimony to the just how much deliberation the powerful exercise when it comes to the lives of the weak.
It the meantime, he endlessly denigrates the criminal defense bar and by extrapolation, those hapless suckers too poor and unconnected to avoid criminal prosecution. No doubt, he is considered part of "liberal Hollywood," and would self-identify himself so. If he is indeed a liberal, the governing assumptions that he buys into show just how little discourse there is in our society, particularly on the criminal justice system.