The Verdict
As “The Verdict” unfolded, I found myself thinking of “Schindler’s List.” That sounds like a strange comparison, but both movies are about amoral individuals who, in a moment of humanity, make a choice that goes against everything we’ve learned about them, all in the name of doing something that is right. Both decisions rely on a lot of moving pieces to unfold in just the right way to turn out, and there are times when the machinery of the world threatens their objectives. By the end, however, they have succeeded, and their faces are a reflection of not necessarily triumph but relief. As the viewer, we will feel their success for them.
Frank Galvin (Paul Newman) is a character whom we recognize immediately when we see him. He’s a lawyer, but what he really is is an ambulance chaser, someone chasing quick settlements and easy money, likely to just keep him mired in drink. If we aren’t seeing him in a bar with a drink, he is at a funeral home, handing the bereaved his card, only to be marking them off the obituaries in the paper. Frank Galvin is not a good person, and he seems like a worse lawyer- his practice is on life support, and his only case is a malpractice suit that his buddy, Mickey Morrissey (Jack Warden), threw in his direction as a favor. It’s an easy settlement- a sister and her husband are suing a hospital run by the arch diosis of Boston for negligence after her pregnant sister lost her baby, and ended up in a coma. Everyone wants to settle, and what Galvin stands to make from the settlement would help him a great deal. So why, all of the sudden, does he want to go to trial, risking everything?
Sidney Lumet is one of those masters that one doesn’t really think about until you watch one of his films. I haven’t seen a lot of his classics, although I will be rectifying that, and “The Verdict” was a pretty great way to start. Working from a screenplay by David Mamet that gives actors dialogue and scenes to chew on in the best way, Lumet has a morality play to tell, and he has an actor more than up for the match in Newman. Last week, I rewatched “The Color of Money” with friends, and one of the things that stood out in that movie that I forgot is how effortlessly Newman plays ambiguous, and a slick conman- when he was with Redford in “Butch Cassidy” and “The Sting,” he was simply a charismatic rogue, but that’s not the same thing we’re getting out of Newman here, or in “The Color of Money.” Even after he decides this case is going to trial, we’re not quite sure what to make of it; he doesn’t consult his clients on the settlement offer, and he doesn’t do enough to make sure his primary witness is protected by the defense’s attempts to keep them from testifying. (The lead attorney for the defense, by the way, is played by the great James Mason, and that iconic voice of his is just right for the role.) Lumet understands the key component for great courtroom dramas- the main character has to be the underdog, and it’s something he and Newman are great at keeping us engaged with, and showing how this genre is most effective. As much as this is a hard-boiled film about redemption for Frank, it’s also an entertaining popcorn movie, although it plays more realistically than others in the genre do later.
We see the moment that changes Frank on this case- it’s a great, silent one in the hospital with Polaroids developing- but even as the trial gets going, we don’t get the interactions with the family a lesser film might have given us that would have given us such insights. We stay firmly with Frank, Mickey, and Laura Fischer, a woman Frank meets in the bar one night, and is played by the great Charlotte Rampling. We see the struggle to keep the case afloat, including trying to convince a nurse who was in the operating room, the only one to not back the defense, to tell what she knows. When that doesn’t work, and his backup medical witness proves to be less than helpful, he has to think outside the box, more so when it appears that the defense knows more than they should, which sets up a third act as tense as any movie of its kind, and an ending that is striking in how dark it is, considering what came immediately before. It’s fascinating to see this film after so many other courtroom dramas that have come since, and feel like this one is a fresh and unique a take on the genre as we’ve ever gotten.
Dramas like this can either age poorly because they are rife with cliches, or because there’s something about the performances or story that just doesn’t hold up. “The Verdict” has aged like a fine wine, from Lumet’s direction to Mamet’s screenplay to every performance to the way everything builds up to this climax, and how the film sells it. “The Verdict” sells the climax as well as any movie has, without the fanfare that feels forced in so many other films like it. That just shows that there are few films quite like “The Verdict,” and few that ever will be.
