The Verdict (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)

The Verdict (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)
by Sidney Lumet

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DVD details

Actor: Charlotte Rampling, Jack Warden, James Mason, Milo O'Shea, Paul Newman
Director: Sidney Lumet
Brand: Twentieth Century Fox
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Dubbed)
Format: Collector's Edition, Color, Dubbed, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 129 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-06-12
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: 20th Century Fox

DVD Reviews of The Verdict (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)

DVD Review: 2.5 stars out of 4
Summary: 3 Stars

The Bottom Line:

Newman is quite good and suitably burnt-out but the legal aspect of the case never moves beyond the mundane and Charlotte Rampling's character seems to serve no purpose beyond manipulating the audience: I thought The Verdict might be the rare intelligent courtroom movie, but regrettably I must keep looking.

DVD Review: Outstanding performance
Summary: 5 Stars

To me this is Paul Newmans finest performance. It has everything that makes a great movie. It's the kind of movie that draws you in where you forget who the actor is and just identify with the character. Even after being stepped on and left for dead by dark forces, a man of compassion and hope emerges in one case that could change the lives of so many.

DVD Review: Essential Cinema
Summary: 5 Stars

A powerhouse drama, "The Verdict" (1982) is more socially relevant when seen today. Director Sidney Lumet elicits a classic performance from Paul Newman as a faded attorney seeking redemption in a malpractice case. David Mamet's detailed script provides memorable roles for James Mason, Jack Warden, Charlotte Rampling, Milo O'Shea and Lindsay Crouse - a truly outstanding cast. The words in Newman's final summation should be set in stone.

DVD Review: The Hero's Journey
Summary: 5 Stars

Ernest Becker, in his remarkably beautiful and insightful The Denial of Death, tells of how our mortality works to transfigure our lives into tales of overcoming -- of transforming ourselves from mortal creatures leading pointless lives into parts of an overarching eternal scheme. It is in this we find meaning. And so our life stories become crafted into heroic narratives.

And so it is in The Verdict, a movie that gets it right in both the large and the small. As a lawyer by training, I can say with great confidence that very few legal dramas and thrillers have so well and accurately depicted the lawyer's life. It is true in the details and in the broad strokes. Within minutes, The Verdict transports us into a world that not only rings true, but is true. From there, we focus in on a critical ethical conundrum, as well as the nexus between the symbolic (and heroic) in human nature and the venal practicalities of real life. With a brilliant, nuanced performance from Paul Newman, the central issue in the story gains a luminosity and clarity that will make The Verdict one of those timeless stories that demonstrate the lasting significance of cinema as storytelling.

Some spoilers follow.

Okay, all that being said, Paul Newman plays a lawyer who has lost his moorings. We learn that he began his career as a brilliant, promising law school graduate. Top of his class. Order of the Coif (the law school equivalent of Phi Beta Kappa on steroids). Fancy job at a fancy firm. And then, he sees the sordid underbelly of the law, the venality of his employers, and gets set up for a fall. Either he looks the other way at the criminal behavior of his firm, or he loses his license to practice law and maybe spends years in jail. And so, facing this choice, the idealism of this idealistic young lawyer loses out. He goes along with the cover up and loses his job to boot. His wife leaves him. And then, he begins a rather slow unwind into alcohol, negligence, and meaninglessness. A lost soul, in other words.

The Verdict picks up when Newman's character finds himself at the end of what may be his terminal losing streak. A new case is referred to him, and it will be the last, it appears. It is, Newman's character later recounts, "the case." It will be the death of him, or his redemption. Unfortunately, that isn't exactly consistent with his duty to the couple that hired him (although they really aren't his clients at all -- he represents a comatose young woman clinging to life as a result of medical malpractice). Suddenly realizing his own redemption is at stake, he rejects a handsome settlement offer without even advising the couple (his ethical obligations required him to tell them), and takes a half-assed stab at going to trial on the case. As his plan unravels -- including a disappearing witness who was the key to his case -- Newman has no choice but to go forward. To find out what he's really made of. To face down an insuperable foe and prevail, or die trying.

Capped off with a closing argument that is both incredibly moving and mercifully short (a hallmark of David Mamet's wonderful dialogue), The Verdict's ending may not be what you expect, but it is eminently meaningful, appropriate, and intelligent.

P.S. In A Few Good Men (Special Edition), you may note how Tom Cruise likely mimicked Paul Newman's performance in The Verdict. To me, it was uncanny.

DVD Review: The Verdict: Mine, Yours, Ours
Summary: 5 Stars

More than a quarter-century after its release, "The Verdict" remains one of the most brilliantly-crafted and deeply-felt courtroom dramas in memory.

That fact alone might be enough to explain, perhaps, why I've watched it at least a dozen times.

Still, it wouldn't entirely explain why I expect to view it at least that many more times, as the crosscurrents of my life cause me to feel a need to reconnect with simple truths that "The Verdict" so artfully conveys in a running time of just over two hours.

Set in early-1980's Boston, Sidney Lumet's masterpiece (expertly adapted from a brilliantly taut screenplay by David Mamet) tells a compelling tale of betrayal and redemption and, ultimately, hope and empowerment--even in the face of overwhelming odds and torturously bleak circumstances.

The film concerns itself, on the surface, with human failings--the collapse of the law practice of its protagonist, attorney Frank Galvin (played by Paul Newman, in one of the most electrifyingly-vivid performances and emotionally-complex roles of his career), as well as the alleged malpractice of anesthesiologists at a Boston hospital to provide adequate care for Galvin's "client," who lapsed into a persistent vegetative-state coma four years earlier, when the doctors seemingly failed to note critical data on her hospital admittance form.

But it is on deeper, subtextual levels that the film transcends the limitations of its genre and period and becomes a darkly cautionary and deeply inspirational tale for us all--and one that will continue to caution and inspire viewers for as long as films are viewed for reasons other than sheer sensationalism.

I could provide example after example of instances in which "The Verdict" serves to illuminate the impact each of our lives has on each of the lives we touch, but I'll settle on a single breathtaking passage in the film, in which Newman presents his summation to the jury:

"You know, so much of the time we're just lost. We say, "Please, God, tell us what is right. Tell us what is true."

"There is no justice. The rich win, the poor are powerless.

"We become tired of hearing people lie. And after a time, we become dead....We start thinking of ourselves as victims. And we become victims.

"And we become weak. We doubt ourselves, we doubt our beliefs, we doubt our institutions. And we doubt the law.

"But today, you are the law. You are the law--not some book, not the lawyers, not a marble statue or the trappings of the court.

"Those are just symbols of our desire to be just. They are, in effect, a prayer--a fervent and a frightened prayer.

"In my religion we say, "Act as if you had faith, and faith will be given to you."

"If.

"If we are to have faith in justice, we need only to believe in ourselves. And act with justice."

Rent it, buy it, watch it (or watch it again--and again, if that becomes as necessary for you as it's become for me), and believe it.

Because ultimately, "The Verdict" makes us realize that we are all advocates of true justice and social equality or collaborators in a flawed system of status quo legal dispensations for the privileged and preferred.

And the jury is still out for each of us, considering the living, breathing "testimony" and real-world evidence we generate every day of our lives.

--Jim Parker

Description of The Verdict (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)

Sidney Lumet's riveting courtroom drama earned five Oscar(r) nominations including Best Picture and Best Actor for Paul Newman's towering performance as a down-and-out alcoholic attorney who stumbles onto one last chance to redeem himself. When attorney Frank Calvin (Newman) is given an open-and-shut medical malpractice case that no one thinks he can win, he courageously decides to refuse a settlement from the hospital. Instead he takes the case, and the entire legal system, to court.

In this 1982 courtroom drama written by David Mamet and directed by Sidney Lumet, Paul Newman found the perfect role for a transitional period of his stellar career. As alcoholic Boston lawyer Frank Galvin, Newman shook off his screen persona as a handsome, blue-eyed hunk to portray an aging, weary man whose best years are behind him, with a shot-glass future that looks very bleak indeed. But when Galvin is given a chance to redeem himself--by proving medical negligence in the case of a comatose woman--he makes one final effort to regain his self-respect and tarnished reputation. He's an underdog against formidable odds, facing a powerful, politically connected lawyer (James Mason, slick as ever) who will do anything to win his case, regardless of professional ethics. Further complicating matters is a woman (Charlotte Rampling) who only appears to be worthy of Galvin's trust and love, until Galvin's best friend and colleague (Jack Warden) proves otherwise. Excellent as both courtroom drama and riveting character study, the film crackles with Mamet's sharp dialogue; and Lumet's direction is a brilliant example of forceful restraint. The film gave Newman one of the best roles of his career; many felt he deserved the Oscar (he lost to Ben Kingsley in Gandhi) that would belatedly be given to Newman for The Color of Money. Along with Hud, Cool Hand Luke, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Verdict ranks highly as a signature performance by one of America's all-time greatest actors. --Jeff Shannon

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