The Heart of Justice

Wow, "The Heart of Justice" has quite an impressively stellar cast for being such an inconspicuous and little-seen made-for-TV thriller from the early 90s. My personal reason for absolutely wanting to track it down was because it features the very last role of the greatest actor who ever lived - Vincent Price - but the rest of the list is dazzling as well. Dennis Hopper, Bradford Dillman, Jennifer Connelly, Eric Stoltz, Harris Yulin, William H. Macy, Joanna Miles, Kurt Fuller... Based on these names, one might think it must be a sort of masterpiece, but not quite. Although a fairly engaging and entertaining thriller/mystery while it lasts, "The Heart of Justice" isn't highly memorable.

The film does open intriguingly, with Vincent Price's magical voice as he's talking to Dennis Hopper over dinner. The latter depicts Austin Blair, a cocky pulp novelist enjoying the success and media attention of his newly published book. When he walks out of the club's restaurant, though, Blair is mercilessly gunned down in broad daylight by an assailant who immediately commits suicide as well. The paper he works for orders the very arrogant reporter David Leader to dive into the story and background of the murderer. He discovers the assailant, Elliot Burgess, comes from a rich and influential family, but struggled with paranoia and mental instability. Elliot read Blair's latest novel and became obsessed with the idea it was based on the lives and secrets of his family. Leader is supposed to write an extended story, but instead he becomes indulged with the murderer's sister Emma, ...and I can't blame him because she's the unearthly ravishing Jennifer Connelly!

The film is enjoyable and compelling to watch, thanks to the solid basic plot and strong performances for every tiniest supportive role, but even the dream cast can't prevent the story from becoming slightly dull and repetitive after a good hour. You will be curious regarding how it will end because, after all, the killer is already identified and dead. I must admit the denouement is unexpected and original, but not entirely satisfying.

Alright, one last homage to Vincent Price. His role is virtually meaningless here, and "The Heart of Justice" is hardly the film to end such a long and brilliant career with, but he still stands proudly and shines in his final role. Two short passages aren't much, but his speech about the rich club members is one of the highlights. I hope Eric Stoltz realizes what a great honor it is to have shared the last on-screen moments of this legendary man.

Austin Blair (Dennis Hopper) is a successful writer that is shot outside of a restaurant after a meeting with Reggie Shaw (Vincent Price). David Leader (Eric Stoltz) is a hot shot reporter that is assigned of finding the truth and suspects of Elliott Burgess. David will also go to the Burgess family for investigating, only for falling for the gorgeous daughter (Jennifer Connelly) which carries a mystery and he will end in the spiral as well.

I have to agree that is a bit confusing (like most TV movies of the 1990s) but for the rest is good. Eric Stoltz gives a nice performance as a young journalist that often goes to his mentor (William Macy) and ends involved with gorgeous Jennifer Connelly. I found the soundtrack chilling and added a lot to the thriller atmosphere.

Don't believe the few reviews here because if you are in the right mood you might like it.

Very much a TV movie with all the hallmarks to prove it. How a project like this got Dennis Hopper, Jennifer Connelly, Vincent Price & William H. Macy to appear in it is most peculiar. Only Connelly has any real screen time but the movie mostly follows Eric Stoltz as quite possibly one of the most annoyingly grating characters ever put to film. How anyone is meant to root for him the way he treats his girlfriend and colleagues makes no sense. A very forgettable 90s tv movie which should probably be left there.

Half of 'The Heart of Justice' consists of a recurrent series of situations after a crime was committed.

Elliot Burgess (Dermot Mulroney) is an aristocratic youngster from the high society of New York, and he assassins a successful author of bestsellers, Austin Blair (Dennis Hopper), after the old man has been having an affair with his teenage sister, Emma Burgess (Jennifer Connelly), in the exclusive club, where all the Burgesses usually spend their summer.

Particularly, Blair's latest novel blatantly portrays all the Burgess in a satirical way, out of the pillow-talk from such an affair.

There also is incest suggested between both siblings as one of the motivations for the crime.

As usual with the 'Neo Noir' productions, 'The Heart of Justice' is almost flawless technically, exuding all the enthusiasm of a 100-percent American genre in plain Manhattan.

Similarly, the cast is awesome; Connelly perfectly takes up the role of the demolishing 'femme fatale' in this story, in this case being a teenage lady, just coming out from high school. This is HER movie, indubitably.

However, 'The Heart of Justice' skids in its approach to the story; the profile and the demeanor of its characters don't correspond to real 'yuppies' from the 'top of the world'.

The movie also fails managing the series of events; the extensive series of flashbacks usually turn uninteresting and awkward.

The success of the Columbo TV series had to do with the clown side of the weird detective; such a story-spoiler-style wouldn't fit in a 'Noir' (or 'Neo Noir') movie though, always so bleak and intellectual.

This is a dark and moody movie that has a couple of things going for it and one big weakness. The things going for it include the acting. Everyone is at least pretty good, down to the smallest parts. Dermot Mulroney is often an unbelievable pain in the neck but here, as a murderously paranoid schizophrenic, his wooden wariness and immobile face are convincing. Dennis Hopper, as Truman Capote or Dominick Dunne or somebody, has a relatively small part, but he has become a reliable and always interesting supporting actor, now that he has survived the 1960s. Eric Stoltz looks the part, red haired and pale, and quick in his movements and in this particular role his voice, which is sometimes a hindrance to our suspension of disbelief, hints at an underlying weakness of character that plays to advantage. Brad Dillman, as the head of the terribly rich and rather warped family, is also quite good, almost unrecognizable as the same guy who was a homosexual genius in "Compulsion." Best of all is Jennifer Connelly as the mysterious sister of Mulroney. She always wears black, right down to her skivvies. Okay, she has the voice and intonations of a high school girl -- but what a high school girl! The voice is always semi-breathless and as deliberate and slow as her most molecular movements or her most molar for that matter. It isn't clear from the film that she was sexually involved with her brother but they were surely bonded. What a delight to look at.

Oh -- the big weakness. Alright. As they say, "Even paranoids have enemies." And in this case, Mulroney's beliefs about Dennis Hopper's writing a scandalous number on the family were evidently correct. Hopper was collecting secret information in the form of gossip and so forth. Stoltz is a successful reporter who begins nosing into the case and finding that, yes, maybe Mulroney was right. But where was Hopper getting his dish from? Jennifer Connelly confesses that it was she who was Hopper's informant. She seduces Stoltz and more or less coerces him into destroying all of his evidence about the case. Having succeeded in quashing the story Stoltz was pursuing, she abandons Stoltz.

The holes in the reasoning gape before us. If she wanted the true story quashed, why did she inform on the family in the first place? The question undermines the entire plot. Almost as bad: Stoltz has quit his job at the paper, and the job has been taken over by Macy. In the last scene, she taunts Macy by revealing her half-naked body to him from a soft-pornly curtained window, and Macy moves toward the building with an expression of what is presumably supposed to be deep desire. Da spider iss spinnink her wep fawh anodder unvary fly! But -- WHY? The scandalous story is now kaput. She should have no interest in Stoltz's replacement at the paper, nor he in her -- he knows practically nothing about Stoltz' work.

The performances and the moody atmosphere are enough to carry this film over the abbysal gaps in the plot, but they provide pretty shaky support.