I love lawyer movies and I can't think of a lawyer movie I didn't like... that is until now. And maybe it's because this movie was barely a lawyer movie. It was a family drama with a big case standing in between them.
The main character, Maggie (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), had serious daddy issues. Her father, Jedediah Ward (Gene Hackman), was a big time lawyer who fought for the little man and was never around for his daughter growing up. Couple that with the fact he cheated on her mother, Estelle (Joanna Merlin), and that made him the most hated object in her life. She had a lifetime subscription to the loathing and self-pity magazine. Just to add more drama, they were opposing each other as attorneys in a big class-action lawsuit against a car manufacturer named Arlo. Maggie was with a big soulless firm representing Arlo while Jed and his tiny law firm represented a man who was burned really badly when his Arlo exploded in an accident.
And as if there wasn't enough drama between daughter and dad, the mother died. The one mediator between them--the last strand of a frayed rope binding them together broke.
Eventually, the movie would get around to lawyering and that's when the movie was good. Once it got into the investigative aspect and building a case I was interested. Unfortunately, it was too little lawyering too late. They'd effectively buried themselves under the rubble of family drama such to the degree that the lawyering aspect of the movie couldn't emerge from underneath it all.
What does it all amount to? I found a lawyer movie I don't like.
The main character, Maggie (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), had serious daddy issues. Her father, Jedediah Ward (Gene Hackman), was a big time lawyer who fought for the little man and was never around for his daughter growing up. Couple that with the fact he cheated on her mother, Estelle (Joanna Merlin), and that made him the most hated object in her life. She had a lifetime subscription to the loathing and self-pity magazine. Just to add more drama, they were opposing each other as attorneys in a big class-action lawsuit against a car manufacturer named Arlo. Maggie was with a big soulless firm representing Arlo while Jed and his tiny law firm represented a man who was burned really badly when his Arlo exploded in an accident.
And as if there wasn't enough drama between daughter and dad, the mother died. The one mediator between them--the last strand of a frayed rope binding them together broke.
Eventually, the movie would get around to lawyering and that's when the movie was good. Once it got into the investigative aspect and building a case I was interested. Unfortunately, it was too little lawyering too late. They'd effectively buried themselves under the rubble of family drama such to the degree that the lawyering aspect of the movie couldn't emerge from underneath it all.
What does it all amount to? I found a lawyer movie I don't like.