"The Verdict" (1982) - Movie Classics

Sidney Lumet and Paul Newman light this film with the colour and the presence. It makes us believe on the intensity of trial sequences but the out of court action is the real battle, the game within this soul of doing the right thing. How many times have it been used in movies? Doing the right thing and its utmost purity/impurity in action happens in the pendulum of courts. The bone of contention which in this case, the truth, never tires in the film but instantly drains us in life. This is one such tale.

Frank Galvin (Paul Newman) is hitting the bottle hard and hardly has any case (3 cases in three and half years, losing all of them). He is diminishing his brilliance and his subordinate Mickey (Jack Warden) has had enough. He is still a good friend and advices him to settle for case against a renowned hospital and its two well respected doctors on the case of negligence which has put a pregnant woman in coma. The hospital knows the reality of Frank and yet, does not want to blow it up and wants to settle up. Frank is on the verge of being like this, wasted and disoriented for rest of his life and this is the no-brainer in the current world to settle up. He is happy. But in his minimal sobriety visit to the hospital to see the girl, makes him change his mind. He has a history and this might be a chance of redemption. Not because of doing the wrong thing in the past but not standing up till the end for the right thing he did.

He has one star witness and the defense with the loaded ammunition of numerous personnel working on the case under the wings of Mr. Concannon (James Mason) is quick to get him. Soon Frank is hanging out scrutinizing himself for putting in the pits of jeopardy and how it took him in one flick of a good settlement to nothing. He is confronted by the girl’s brother in law, Kevin Doneghy (James Handy). He is right. With pain and patience, Kevin and his wife Sally (Roxanne Hart) has waited enough to live a little for them. This is where along with Frank we are in the guilty gloom and morale questioning of the situation. What is right out here? What does settlement mean? Another flurry of consumer-economy spins its part over the pleasure and pain.

Seeing Paul Newman work Frank explains so much of how it would have inspired some one (may be even Clooney in “Michael Clayton”). We see Frank in dark silhouette playing pin ball and the outside reflects a cold chilly early morning in Boston. The sounds of the pin ball machine is heard, the noise which does not shadow the state of mind of Frank. He takes a sip on his beer, takes a puff on his cigarette and plays back. In that scene we know that Frank meditating his life in shambles through his mind subconsciously has been involved in a game of action, interest and no concern. This is his life and we get it.

“The Verdict” could have been named “Frank Galvin”. But the film surfaces out from this person. He is down at the bottom of a career in law and the only solace for him in this is that his self pity which by now he has trained himself considerable enough. And some one rattles him out of it, Laura (Charlotte Rampling). She blunts him in his face with the short acquaintance she has made and little do we know about her too. And the all supportive and open Mickey are too good of a supporting role for the character and to Newman as a performer.

Lumet structuring the screenplay by David Mamet uses the closed surroundings as that of a play. It does become a court drama but never does the emotional axis gets betrayed by the realm of cinematic indulgence. These are the movies which define that era. It gets sophisticated but still has the old wear. This quasi antique fair has become such a landmark and recreation to represent that time period. I wish how it would be if some one would try to recreate it. Black and White still can shed away the dusted clarity of the origins of the cinema and sometime become a comic of a routine, but this can be attempted with the undisturbed style and seriousness the 80s have created.

The legal battling stories are where the real balance of right and wrong lies. In fact the skewing nature of both is of high margins when it comes out there. But what is missed is the action which has brought them over to the courts. The action appears so small and sometimes we are made to think the excuses we come up for missing a signal or missing something trivial over the work and many other things. The reason for being careful, not paranoid and over cautious, but careful is what it gets stressed. We can never say, we were tired or we were not aware of something. It is either to take the responsibility or compromise your way out to suffer the life long torture of guilt hoping to be redeemed as Frank does or some may reason out themselves, like Dr. Towler (Wesley Addy).