The Defenders: Taking the First

This was a very good movie on its own. I liked it even more in that it coincidentally so closely parallels the real life gay hate crime murder of Matthew Shepard in Wyoming, and how it is believed that anti gay messages and TV commercials from various groups are responsible for this and for provoking anti gay hatred.

I've never thought much of THE DEFENDERS TVMs mainly because of the liberal do gooder subtext that bashes the audience over the head at every single opportunity so when the teleplay started I instantly knew where it was going . A right wing rabble rouser called John Walker stands on campus calling for Americans to take back their country . A lone Latino protester heckles Mr right wing guy and on the way home he bumps into some of the rabble rouser's vanguard .

!!!! MILD SPOILERS !!!!

As I said I knew where this was going . The Latino defends himself against the bad guys and finds himself on a murder charge but this doesn't happen as the Latino is beaten to death , so I guess credit where it's due since this plot twist surprised me and we see Preston and Preston , who if you've seen previous TVMs in THE DEFENDERS series will know are bleeding heart liberals , having to defend a misguided teenager up on a racist murder charge . So far so good and if the story continued in this vein it would certainly have been very interesting for this viewer . Unfortunately this is skated over very briefly and the story once again becomes a liberal crusade against conservative values

I don't want to give the impression that it's because of politics that I disliked TAKING THE FIRST but as with the previous TVMs in the series we're not exactly asked to be impartial as to who the good guys and bad guys are . Can't the audience make up their own minds ? The rather polemical scripting doesn't allow the audience to think for themselves which is slightly insulting . But it's with the rather dubious legal arguments that the main problem lies - If someone makes a rather extreme speech and them someone decides to further a vaguely similar cause through violence does this mean the person making the speech is responsible ? Highly unlikely and the arguments put forward are badly explored too

I would say that THE DEFENDERS: TAKING THE FIRST is probably the best in the series but considering the very low marks I gave the previous two TVMs that's not much of a compliment and this ( Final ? ) story in the series suffers from all the problems like highly unlikely legal arguments and too much liberal politics as the other stories that preceded it

Like the other Defenders movies from Showtime, this one was just brilliant in it's script and story. You think the entire movie will revolve around the first trial, but then it becomes an intricate working of yet another related trial. It's kind of hard to comment on the movie without giving anything away, and by giving away the plot, it totally ruins the movie, so I won't do that. All I will say is that this movie is genius. Just like the other Defenders films, it's a nonstop puzzle that these brilliant lawyers are putting together, and you can never guess what will ultimately happen in the end. The actors are terrific and the storyline is intriguing, it doesn't get any better than this when it comes to legal dramas.