Night Falls on Manhattan

The plot was predictable; what was VERY good is the realistic sour compromises that atty's make. that alone warrants this movie as MUST SEE for students. I went to St.Johns University (undergraduate legal education), as did Sean Casey (AndyGarcia) No punches were pulled there, and that was reflected in the protagonist effort to make ethical decisions. There was one line that summarizes so much: "...if you want clean hands, become a priest. The degree to which police, criminal attys, DA's and all parties with knowledge about a criminal action get ugly is very true. This hopefully will take the hot air out of many law students, puffed up with him or herself. Well done and accurate, even if predictable. The DEVIL is in the movie detail.

This film is definitely based on the Larry Davis incident that took place in the late 80's where corrupt cops tried to shake down a drug dealer who wanted out of their "system"(dealers who payed off cops to rob other dealers). When he got out due to the death of his infant daughter, they invaded his home, he fought back by killing and wounding some officers and escaped leading to a dangerous manhunt in NYC. When they finally caught him (an old family relative snicthced on him), false accusations were brought up by the police and the media to portray him as a ruthless thug who ran away after killing the cops when all he wanted to do was leave the organization involving crooked cops and drug dealers. He is still serving time in Rikers Island fighting for a new trial.

Check out the documentary called THE LARRY DAVIS STORY which won an award for Best Documentary in the Urbanworld Film Festival in 2003.

However, it serves well on film and Sidney Lumet is great act capturing the look and feel of NYC in the early 90's. It has a "Prince of the City" feel to it.

I liked this film, this is not a great movie but it's a good one, and the most important thing was that it didn't bore me for a moment.

The performances are good, the plot is interesting and clever. What I didn't like about it was that the shots of the film looked like a movie made for TV.

The plot is about how Sean Casey ,an assistant district attorney working for just six months, improves very fast in his way up at his job but he is going to discover many dirty things about policemen and politics and is at this point where he will have to make difficult decisions that will put in text his principles.

If you like intelligent police or court movies, this one is for you.

If you enjoy straight-up, old-style dirty cop/courtroom stories, this may be the last of the great ones, filmed in 1997. Sidney Lumet directs. There are some really fine, passionate scenes that make you care about the characters. Three-fourths of the plot is roughly predictable, but this movie has the glow of being a fine, original, boiler plate version for many cop stories to come. Moody jazz trumpet score, including songs by Wynton Marsalis. And wow, what a cast: Andy Garcia, Ian Holm, Lena Olin, Richard Dreyfuss, James Gandolfini, Dominic Chianese. What more can I say?

This movie introduces you to the complexities of the judicial system. It starts with the idealistic view. It leaves you to make the choice of what is right and what is wrong. You'll have to decide for yourself what is or would be justice. From the politics, the backroom deals and the downright corruption it's all there. It certainly isn't pretty because nobody's perfect. The acting is great but I've always felt Andy Garcia is a fine actor. The entire cast was well chosen and you feel their emotions and believe them as their character. The story moves along well and there are enough twists to keep you interested. This isn't a movie that leaves you cheering for more. It does however make you think about the complexities of justice. When your outside looking in things always look different than when you are inside looking out.

Overall rating: 8 out of 10.

Here's yet another film with a too low IMDb average. Really 6.6. I'm so glad I came to view this film, a few years back. I just came to view it again, where I enjoyed it as much as last time. I love Sidney Lumet films. He makes good ones, rarely a bad one. I mean, he gave us Network, Equus, Family Business, and the lesser known, Guilty As Sin. This is just another one that holds up to the others, and another one on Lumet's notch of good films. This one has been constructed gingerly, attentively, as far as plot and story goes. One would even say judiciously, with great performances to boot, Dreyfuss, and Ron Leibman, a scene stealer, and terribly underused actor, most of his stuff t.v. related. Corruption runs high in a few cop beats, where Garcia's cop father (Holm, really good) is shot badly by a burst of machine gun fire, when a drug bust goes bad. Three beats were called in, where there should of only been one, which leads us to consider a few bad apples were involved. Even Garcia's father could be bad too like his partner and childhood mate, Joey (the late great Gandofini) a modest performance. Garcia, an ex cop, now a promising lawyer, is assigned to this criminal case, by Leibman who runs a law firm, to the disgust and anger of a slick lawyer adversary, Colm Feore (just another top form performance here), where the big black drug dealer, a nasty piece of work in a quite threatening performance, by Shiek Mahmud- Bey is caught, so it's really gonna get heated in that courtroom, where you don't want this black dude mad. Garcia's amusing remark, a moment I loved, sealed that deal. The turning point or second story, let's call it, takes off when a black book is recovered from one of the dead cops in that failed bust, a number of cops names including Holm's, all supposedly on the take are in there, and things get really juicy, plot wise, which sees Garcia back in the court room. This film has really been constructed thriller wise, as many characters, mostly the ones in question, aren't telling us everything. Dreyfuss's admittance about his teenage daughter to Garcia in those spa room scenes was something unexpected too. The film is very well written, all of it, it's treatment, etc, all shaped to perfection, solely by Lumet, the first scene in the lecture room, with budding lawyers, grabbing us straight away, with in your face frankness. The film has a very well researched feel, Garcia's performance though, not as good as the others. The character's choices and their situations, make sense, and we very well understand. If you're a cop and you go crooked, well the ball's in your caught, baby. Highly underrated and very much recommended cop/courtroom drama, Dreyfuss's performance as the black guy's defendant, the one you'll remember. He's brilliant.