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Rating: Usually, films focused on legal matters are extremely slow, not to say boring, as they progress between accusations, defenses, witnesses, evidence, etc... That's not the case with the latest work from the eighty-year-old director Sidney Lumet, who, after "12 Angry Men" and "Night Falls on Manhattan," returns to set a film in a courtroom.
A courtroom particularly crowded because the subject of the work is the longest verdict in the history of the United States of America: a whopping 21 months to resolve 76 charges for 20 defendants defended by 19 lawyers. Why only 19? Because the protagonist of the story, Jackie DiNorscio, decides to defend himself by referring to an article of the U.S. Constitution. At the time of the trial, he was already serving a 30-year sentence for drug trafficking, and having nothing to lose, he decides to "go it alone" to face this new charge. Instead of the usual legal thriller, we are faced with a comedy with a legal backdrop because Jackie's ignorance, candor, and crude language make the court a kind of cabaret stage.
The entire film centers on the good-natured figure of this likable and flamboyant criminal who, joke after joke, tries to win over the jury. It's the typical film where the audience roots for the "bad guy" (Jackie) and instead hates the inquisitorial manner of the accuser. It doesn't matter that Jackie deals drugs and gets high, goes to prostitutes, extorts protection money, and is truly part of a criminal family that controls New Jersey. This is secondary because he is paradoxically an honest person who doesn’t betray the family and is willing to get shot by a drug-addicted cousin and ready to take the entire sentence just to not betray his friends and keep them free. What matters is his endearing face, in short, and his ridiculous demeanor in a courtroom.
In the end, the story is interesting and different from the usual, but the film adaptation of the story doesn't seem particularly brilliant to me. The Carlton Mayers of America, aka Vin Diesel (XXX, Fast And Furious, Pitch Black, etc.), who gained about twenty kilos for the occasion, fits perfectly in the role of this Italian-American character, but it's the construction of the film that didn't completely convince me. The problem lies in the fact that right from the start you can tell how it will all end. In my opinion, it goes overboard both in rhetoric (closing speeches), in Jackie's barroom talk (which I refuse to believe could have been accepted by a judge), and in the excessively exaggerated supporting characters. A sea of stereotypes: the judge with a fake heart of stone who is actually as kind as bread, the adversary-friend lawyer, the bastard prosecutor who wants to give a hard time to some likable criminals, etc...
In short, a little film that could have been developed better. Vin Diesel emerges victorious, demonstrating an unexpected acting talent by breaking free from the role of the steel-muscled iron man who spouts clichés regularly and beats up the bad guys of the moment. Lumet, on the other hand, seems to have lost his creativity, limiting himself to producing a product that is far too easy to digest and which has even been rejected at the box office. Simply pointless and supported almost exclusively by the curiosity of seeing Vin Diesel in such a different character from the usual.
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