An average movie

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since I have a weak spot for Kate Beckinsale, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, I think the damned thing actually had some potential and I especially did appreciate the fact that, during the first trial, the accused, her boyfriend, the judge, the cops, basically, pretty much everyone involved turned out to be either dirty, nasty or creepy or any combination of these attributes. Unfortunately, the main character was just so focused on finding out the ‘truth’ when, in fact, a top lawyer should know, what the job is about, it’s defending your client so she actually did her job. So, the material was interesting but the approach was rather disappointing, I’m afraid. Coming back to the main character, they spent too much time on her private life and I have seen too many times the whole gimmick of the struggling recovering alcoholic to really care. The fact that Beckinsale was never really convincing, especially next to Nick Nolte who was basically born to play such characters, didn’t help either. I mean, if you decide to play an addict, at least, you should make sure that you don’t look like a top-model. Anyway, the thing that really ruined this movie for me was actually the ending though. Seriously, to see her turning against her client was just not only completely unethical but, above all, pretty lame. I mean, they provided some sound arguments that everything is never really black-and-white during such trials but, suddenly, they made this really far-fetched u-turn to show that ‘justice will prevail’ after all which was seriously hard to swallow. Anyway, to conclude, in spite a couple of decent ideas, this movie just didn’t work for me and I don’t think it is really worth a look after all. 

5/10