Citizen Verdict

"Citizen Verdict" is an interesting movie. The plot is about airing criminal trials on television and the audience acting as the jury.

Jerry Springer plays Marty Rockman, the TV producer who thinks up this idea. Armand Assante is Sam Patterson, the defense lawyer. Assante And Springer put in fun performances. They both go over the top. If you loved Springer's performance in "The Defender" as the President, you'll definitely like this one. He has more screen time. He has a great speech near the end of the movie.

One of the problems with the film is that some of the other actors are pretty lousy. (the actress who plays Patterson's wife and the Citizen Verdict TV Commentators). Another problem is that there are too many cutaways to the "man\woman on the street" interviews. It hurts the film a little. Besides that, the movie is worth watching to satisfy your longing for the Armand\Springer team up you always knew was coming.

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Alert: ***might contain mild spoilers***

The basic idea has been used in countless books and films. The media (especially TV), lead by greedy and corrupt people (focus is on one character story wise) turn a very serious real life issue into a circus. This is of course all about ethics.

I liked the look and feel of the movie, a mixture between (fake)live TV broadcast, documentary style interviews and dramatic film footage. I loved the(purposely)cheesy CGI used for the opening of the TV show 'Citizen Verdict'. I actually liked to see Jerry Springer in this - he is winking an eye at himself, which one can either see as distracting or as a bonus. I go for the latter. Of course Springer can't act. He is not an actor, he is a TV show host - which is totally different. The difference between Jerry Springer and the 'real' actors very well counterbalanced by the 'interview' footage. One character seems to be a real-life judge or lawyer, also with no 'acting' abilities - and is very believable and I agree with what he says, as much as I agree with some of the others.

In any case the movie is very far fetched in its basic premise. I no next to nothing about the US justice system (having seen hundreds of courtroom dramas definitely isn't enough) but I can't believe that the scenario is even remotely feasible: people can vote guilty or innocent without any prove that they have even seen one second of the TV show (=trial). Nah...

I also think that the characters of the prosecutor and the defense attorney are very unclear. There are definitely many loose story threads.

The film ends with all characters agreeing that the US justice system as it is is still the best possible. In many a movie I would have thought: come on! A satire and now you are pulling out??? But I agree with the ending: a film cannot be clear enough about its message when it comes to the legal system and death penalty. Yet, I really didn't get the 'point' of the movie. Is the hole system corrupt? Is it just the Jerry Springer character? Whom does he stand for? Armand Assante (the defense attorney) is a hot shot, so he should have known from the start that the whole thing is manipulated, or let's say 'controlled' by someone. The ethical issues, the politics are all oversimplified and the plot threads to fussy. What about the mail prostitute who testified in trial that the victim actually was into S'n'M? Oh yes, he was bought. But a flavor of yet another fuzzy and loose plot thread remains...

two out of four stars: plus: the 'Harry Dean Stanton rule' also applies to Roy Scheider: they never appear in a bad movie.

Almost forgot: the soundtrack is excellent! The songs as well as the orchestral underscore.

I just finished watching the movie, so I didn't have the time to fully digest it yet. Not that it is a "heavy" film, it's just that I've watched Almodovar's Bad Education before this one and I'm still under the impression...But let's get back to The verdict. All I can say is that the movie is acceptable and it isn't a blockbuster or an Oscar movie, but you can still watch it, especially when you're bored :-) No I mean, Jerry Springer is not that bad as an actor, after all, the medias are his area. Assante is always the same- in every single movie- it's like he has been playing this one role he knows during his whole career. He always have that same expression, the same intonation...it's a little bit weird, don't you thing? Anyway, to summon it, the movie's not bad, the idea is better though. I think a much better movie could have been made based on it. It's interesting to see how TV manipulates people so easily. And it get's you to, all of us, even though we don't see it sometimes. An interesting subject, but it hasn't been analysed as well as I expected it. I give it a C for the idea and some of the acting.

Live with the fast forward button or suffer the consequences. Roy Scheider and Armand Assante seem like they would rather be in a different movie, any movie except "Citizen Verdict". Everything is annoying, from the hand held video cameras, to the redundant interviews. Jerry Springer is the only actor that appears comfortable with this sensationalized swill. Wrap the whole thing up in one sentence. This is not entertainment, it is merely a trick on unsuspecting audiences who admire Armand Assante or Roy Scheider. Terrible beyond belief, this should be avoided at all costs. ..... - MERK

Citizen Verdict is not a fantastic film but it deserves credit for the profound issues it raises as to the current trend in the evolution of law and justice into Entertainment. This theme was treated with blistering intelligence some 32 or so years ago in a film called NETWORK directed by Sidney Lumet and written by Paddy Chayevsky that warned about the risk of reducing the Fourth Estate to a business scramble for profits and entertainment ratings. NETWORK explored the logical extension of and the dangers inherent in permitting our news outlets to become hijacked by the excessive market impulses of the modern American Corporate Economy. Citizen Verdict is a variation on this same interesting theme applied to our Criminal Justice System. The film shows how the convergence of corporate profits, entertainment, and the law can collide in deeply perverse ways.

Briefly, Citizen Verdict takes a Capital Case and submits it to Television Executives who evaluate the case for its entertainment value, which is to say its ratings worthiness, which is to say its profitability, and submits the case to a Jury composed of a mass television audience. Ironically, Sidney Lumet's 12 Angry Men is an homage to our Trial By Jury system. In Citizen Verdict, the Jury becomes the Mass Audience, less a jury than a National or International (depending on the size of the voting audience) Plebiscite. In other words, criminal justice really becomes an electoral matter.

The implications of this are enormous. First, television justice has already to some extent made small claims civil justice a matter of entertainment in many of the Court Television programs. There is currently a profusion of high paid celebrity judges who mete out justice for ratings on a daily basis in a kind of fast food, McJustice format designed to entertain while resolving disputes. The problem becomes whether Justice or Entertainment becomes the primary concern and, if entertainment prevails, what that means for a Democracy. Second, it is only a matter of degree and programming restraint which relegates civil law to television while excluding criminal law. Thirdly, the tendency of money to corrupt even the strictest of moral standards makes the risk that potential television profits could outweigh and overshadow any legal, civil, or political judgment relative to life and limb. Fourthly, most of the verdicts on the current crop of television programs are decided solely by the sitting Judge but if the ratings were promising enough, which is to say the profits enormous enough, how would considerations of life and limb compare to the billions in potential profits? What's a little Due Process mean when there are millions to be made in the American Marketplace?

Citizen Verdict is commenting on a societal depravity which puts money, entertainment, and self-indulgence above human dignity & Justice, and extrapolates this malady to Television and the potential Corruption of law and the Criminal Justice system. It may seem like an outrageous plot but truth is often stranger than fiction.

The idea of De-Humanization is not necessarily as far off as we think if for example the Rights of Corporations are increasing in inverse proportion to those of Human Beings. In an era where Constitutional Liberty is sacrificed on the altar of national security, while salaries and earnings remain relatively stable, and technology creates wealth at dizzying rates, the individual and his due process protections may become as extinct as the dinosaur in the interest of stable markets: really, a matter of Hobson's Choice.

If law becomes more a business than a matter of human equity, if money begins to eclipse the value of human life and happiness, if necessity means more than freedom, if profits overshadow justice, then there is no doubt that all the evolution of our Jurisprudence - Hammurabai, The Athenian and Roman Codes, the Magna Charta, the English bill of rights, the American Declaration, the US Constitution and The American Bill of Rights - can be supplanted and swept away in the twinkling of an avaricious eye by TV Ratings and Human Shortsightedness and Endless Consumerism. 1,000 of years of human legal progress eviscerated by greed and trivialized by entertainment ratings and a man's life and limb subject to Mob Justice like the lynchings of old.

Finally, in the light of Citizen Verdict, one must rethink the difference between a Just Verdict and a Popular Verdict and what that might mean, for example, in the context of an unpopular defendant.

OJ Simpson would have fried if he'd been a Defendant on Citizen Verdict. He was, thanks to this same convergence of media, law, and entertainment values, one of the most unpopular defendants in history. Our system acquitted him, the Citizen Verdict system would have probably convicted him. What should that tell us about Criminal Justice as Entertainment and Popularity as Justice? It says that a Man's guilt or innocence should stand on the facts, evidence and law and the integrity of our legal institutions. It says that our entire system could easily become skewed and that our compulsive drive and bottomless appetite for growth and money is probably corruptive, unsustainable over the long haul if we hope to remain civilized, clouds our better judgment, and will probably erode all our institutions and connection to human values if we are not perceptive.

Citizen Verdict shows that justice as entertainment as profit is not ultimately justice at all because its goal is not solely or even primarily justice within the context of television. It can't be unless it appears on PBS, and then it still has to entertain. Justice simply should not be for sale or even give the appearance that it is for sale in a healthy Democratic Republic. This is not a monumental film but it raises monumental issues having to do with Human Dignity, Due Process of Law, and the intersection of Entertainment and Money on the ultimate concern of the law which should always be Justice.