I enjoy legal conflicts and courtroom movies. Not much action, usually, but lots of chicanery. There seems to have been a spate of movies over the last decade or two about strong-willed women having their way with miscreants. "Zero Dark Thirty," though not a courtroom drama, was quite good except for the strident and unnecessary outburst by Jessica Chastain employing the MF word in the presence of the Secretary of Defense. "Erin Brokovitch," also a professional piece, had Julia Roberts shocking the rest of the room by claiming she'd seduced the witnesses with BJs. I wish the fad would exhaust itself because it provides a cheap thrill at the expense of verisimilitude.
In "Marie," one of the earliest, Sissy Spacek as the principled Chairman of the Parole Board in Tennessee is spared that chore. And Spacek, with her tiny figure and long red hair, is sort of loomed over by the guys she works for -- especially Fred Dalton Thompson, in his debut role playing himself, who wears the same dyspeptic expression he wore throughout his career. He looks like what you would look like if you were losing a duel of wits with a claw machine in an arcade. In one scene, when Spacek wins her court case, she hugs him and he tries to smile but what emerges is a teeth-filled snarl, as of a threatening junkyard dog.
The problem is that it's a kind of clunky picture. The major performances are good enough, and Spacek is thoroughly convincing. She's also a genial lady with pretty legs, my co-star in the unforgettable "Crimes of the Limbic System" or whatever it was.
There's a murder in here. Spacek's only true friend, who is going to testify at her trial and save her bacon, is strangled. A slight problem there. The incident is never referred to again. Instead we're immediately back to Spacek's underwhelming tribulation: Will she be able to hang onto her job, despite the governor's accusations of sloppiness? Never mind the murder of her friend, who denounced her in a letter. (Some friend.) But will the jury accept the governor's lies? Guess.
It's a mid-range movie that loses its focus and takes us on a tour of a pistachio nut that one of her three kids swallowed. The peregrinations of the nut make no medical sense. Neither do some other details, not worth going into. The writing is pretty murky and the direction is adequate, no more than that. Little in the way of local color.
Not a bad movie but I'd rather expected more because I'd seen both "Brokovitch" and "Zero Dark Thirty" first. They're both fine but this one is a bit like a Lifetime Movie Network feature. Not a knock on the performers, just that their roles are poorly written.
In "Marie," one of the earliest, Sissy Spacek as the principled Chairman of the Parole Board in Tennessee is spared that chore. And Spacek, with her tiny figure and long red hair, is sort of loomed over by the guys she works for -- especially Fred Dalton Thompson, in his debut role playing himself, who wears the same dyspeptic expression he wore throughout his career. He looks like what you would look like if you were losing a duel of wits with a claw machine in an arcade. In one scene, when Spacek wins her court case, she hugs him and he tries to smile but what emerges is a teeth-filled snarl, as of a threatening junkyard dog.
The problem is that it's a kind of clunky picture. The major performances are good enough, and Spacek is thoroughly convincing. She's also a genial lady with pretty legs, my co-star in the unforgettable "Crimes of the Limbic System" or whatever it was.
There's a murder in here. Spacek's only true friend, who is going to testify at her trial and save her bacon, is strangled. A slight problem there. The incident is never referred to again. Instead we're immediately back to Spacek's underwhelming tribulation: Will she be able to hang onto her job, despite the governor's accusations of sloppiness? Never mind the murder of her friend, who denounced her in a letter. (Some friend.) But will the jury accept the governor's lies? Guess.
It's a mid-range movie that loses its focus and takes us on a tour of a pistachio nut that one of her three kids swallowed. The peregrinations of the nut make no medical sense. Neither do some other details, not worth going into. The writing is pretty murky and the direction is adequate, no more than that. Little in the way of local color.
Not a bad movie but I'd rather expected more because I'd seen both "Brokovitch" and "Zero Dark Thirty" first. They're both fine but this one is a bit like a Lifetime Movie Network feature. Not a knock on the performers, just that their roles are poorly written.