La loi criminelle

(taaa-daaa)....what the hell is a Mystfest anyway? "Criminal Law", an aging thriller/suspense flick, features a supercharged Oldman plays a hotshot attorney who gets involved with a client who....aw, never mind. This film is so convoluted I felt like I should be taking notes. The problem is, I was too busy yawning. Engaging at first, "CL" wears itself out early on as Campbell steers his crew through a rote production, apparently obsessed propagating his notion of good film to the exclusion of the audience's. A dreary Canadian shoot with a made-for-tv feel, "CL" gives us little with which to empathize and so we quickly disengage and let the movie run wearing itself out to the drooping of audience eye lids.

Criminal Law is a thriller of the first order.

Performances were outstanding by all. The Martin Thiel character, played to dizzy, frightening reality by Bacon, is chilling, to say the least.

The courtroom scenes were excellently written and performed. Oldman, as Ben Chase, acts at a high level as he brings his character through the torturous conflict between his professional ethics and his own humanity. Without, I might add, any British accent showing through, but with a clearly intentional Irish brogue when his blood is up. Nice work, that.

Mark Kasdan--author of Silverado and brother of writer/director/producer Lawrence Kasdan--writes a spare story with immediate suspense. He neatly puts attorney and client in a cat-and-mouse game, where Chase's silence, or betrayal, are equally dangerous for him, and for his love interest, Ellen, played well by Karen Young (Heat, 9-1/2 Weeks).

Elizabeth Shepherd plays the icy mother to perfection. Her blind devotion to her son, along with the absence of any physical display of emotion, are together at the root of the Thiel family dysfunction. This interpersonal rift makes the Martin Thiel character appear stiff and creepy and adds to the confusion and suspense of his innocence or guilt in the string of grisly sex murders that pepper this film.

The use of fire and rain throughout also enrages the imagination and adds clearly to the loathing an animal fear in Criminal Law. It is easy for the viewer to feel stalked or hunted in these parts of the movie--deliciously!

Tess Harper and Joe Don Baker have critical but minor roles, and do nothing to spoil the suspense of it. Both get well into their characters, though, somehow, Harper's Det. Stillwell and Shepherd's Dr. Thiel persona seem too similar...a minor overall script chemistry complaint, at that.

This is a thoroughly enjoyable movie, much better than most we see today almost 20 years hence. Yes, there are minor scripting flaws that I think the true movie-lover will forgive. Any fan of Kevin Bacon and/or Gary Oldman who hasn't seen this film is missing something terrific.

I really wanted to like this film because it had two of my favourite actors in it- Gary Oldman and Kevin Bacon. Their performance is great, as with some of Martin Campbell's (Goldeneye) direction, but it is the story-line that ruins this film comprising of some decent scenes but overall the plot is unbelievable and ridiculous.

See this film if you're a huge fan of either Gary Oldman and Kevin Bacon! 'Criminal Law' has got some good moments but it equally has it's tedious ones due to a poor storyline and unbelievable plot! Visually, director Martin Campbell has a unique style and the performances from it's two leads are very good and intense in parts, but unfortunately doesn't save this film! 'Criminal Law' gets a **1/2 out of *****!

In 1988's Criminal Law, Gary Oldman plays Ben Chase, an attorney who defends a man, Martin Thiel (Kevin Bacon) accused of a particularly vicious murder. With clever lawyering, he gets Thiel off, only to realize shortly afterward that Thiel is guilty and out there killing again.

This time, though, Thiel is playing a mind game with Chase and wants to retain him when suspicion falls on him for a second murder that Ben knows he committed. Ben wants to right the wrong of the first "not guilty" plea so he agrees to work as Thiel's attorney, hoping for inside information that will convict the man.

This is very interesting premise, though the various themes get lost in an uneven script that tries to do too much. The focus actually becomes the performances of Oldman and Bacon - Oldman giving a very emotional performance and Bacon a very cold one.

Posts here have pronounced Oldman as hammy - hammy to me is when a performance is bigger than the emotions underneath so that the performance seems phony. Here, the character of Ben seemed to be truly overwrought, and the emotions came from a real place.

Oldman at any rate is an interesting actor, and this material in the hands of a lesser one would have made it dismissible. As it is, the film survives on the basis of the work of the two actors.

Honing in on one theme rather than several would have helped "Criminal Law." It tries to tackle psychosis, legal technicalities, the law versus justice, attorney-client privilege, mystery and romance in one script. When it comes out of the Mixmaster, it's all pretty vague.

Criminal Law is directed by Martin Campbell and written by Mark Kasdan. It stars Gary Oldman, Kevin Bacon, Tess Harper, Karen Young and Joe Don Baker. Music is by Jerry Goldsmith and cinematography by Philip Meheux.

Boston attorney Ben Chase (Oldman) successfully defends Martin Thiel (Bacon) who is on trial for a sexually aggravated murder. But not long after Chase comes to realise Thiel's guilt and sets about correcting the wrong he helped orchestrate.

If you have never seen a legal thriller before, or a serial killer based neo-noir for that matter, then Criminal Law might just poke its head above average waters. Unfortunately the well is quite full of such filmic exercises, and much better they are too!

It's all so formulaic, where the potent promise of character disintegration into a hellish noir infused world is never fully realised. Instead we get characters whose actions are at times baffling, others who are under used or pointless scene fillers, and a screenplay cracking under the strain of a near two hour run time. Add in some poor accents for the setting, one of Goldsmith's worst scores and a damp squib finale, well you are struggling continually to get on board with it all. There's a high energy sex scene where the makers are clearly showing what their intentions were, in how stuck in a web of turmoil Chase is, but it just proves how muddled and rickety the narrative is.

Positives come in the form of the visual look of the piece, Meheux (GoldenEye/Casino Royale) showing some nice stylish touches, most notably a dark underground set of scenes where slatted shadows operate as the noir staple of a character psychologically imprisoned, but these moments are fleeting and the story begs for more. Elsewhere, the killer's motives are at least interesting, adding in a controversial moral poser, and Elizabeth Shepherd as Thiel's mother is superbly cold and detached (pic needed more of her). But ultimately it's a disappointing film and not recommended as a must see. 5/10