Negative Portrayals of Lawyers & Judges in 4 Films

The following discussion will take an analytical view of the negative portrayal of judges and lawyers in four films of recent years, "And Justice For All" (1979), "From the Hip" and "Suspect" (both 1987), and "Presumed Innocent" (1990). Of these films, the first and last were both highly prominent and well-reviewed major productions; "And Justice For All," starring Al Pacino, is one of the blackest of black comedies, while "Presumed Innocent," with Harrison Ford, is listed in the Video Movie Guide as a suspense film. "Suspect" (starring Cher) was a slightly more modest film, listed as a drama, while "From the Hip" (Judd Nelson) is a rather obscure comedy verging from slapstick to moments of seriousness. In genre and scale, they thus are typical of a fairly wide spectrum of recent Hollywood productions.

Our concern in examining these films will be not only with the element of legal or judicial misconduct as specific plot points i

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will go free. There is no hint that the pervasive political corruption revealed in the film will be corrected, or even that it has been revealed. In both of these last two films, therefore, the viewer is left with a sense of a legal and judicial system that is out of control. Indeed, a feature of all of these films save "From the Hip" is that they portray judges as both politically corrupt and involved in other crimes. In "Witness," the judge committed murder specifically to cover up his previous corruption. In "And Justice For All," the judge defendant is not specifically a conspirator, but he is a member in good standing of a political cabal that will manipulate the system to try and get him off. Independently of his political role, he happens to be a violent rapist. In "Presumed Innocent" the presiding judge is corrupt (though not closely tied to the broader conspiracy), and is a frequenter of male prostitutes, whom he evidently pressures into servicing him in turn for dismissing charges against them. The bad judge is thus a persistant theme running through most of these films. This treatment of judges is all the more striking when we consider the unique status of judges in American public life. Judges are traditiona
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Approximate Word count = 2528
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)

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