The Trial

It's so hard to find a movie lately that is;

• easy to follow
• dialogue you can actually hear and understand
• a good story
• not dropping continuous, solicitous profanities for no apparent reason
• not flashing around in some bizarre time warp
• has a definitive ending that doesn't result in you wanting that small part of your life back.

It isn't a blockbuster but didn't need to be. It is entertaining and we enjoyed it.

Enjoyable and entertaining but there something's that don't add up.

Slow and not particularly well acted, "The Trial" stars Matthew Modine in what was possibly a TV pilot.

Modine, one of the producers of this drama, plays Mac, an attorney who has been unable to cope with the horrible deaths of his wife and sons in a car accident. He has not been practicing law and in fact, is about to blow his brains out when a call comes in from a judge (Rance Howard) who wants him to take a case. A young man has been accused of giving a woman drugs and then killing her.

Mac reluctantly takes this on, coming up against a prosecutor (Bob Gunton) who asks for the death penalty. Mac hires an investigator (Robert Forster) and a psychiatrist (Clare Carey) to see what they can find out about what happened and about the psychological makeup of the man himself.

Nothing original about this film or the story. Modine gives a nice performance, as does Forster, one of my favorite actors. The rest of the acting was not impressive, nor was the direction. It possibly had the makings of a TV series, though, with some better pacing and scripts.

I went into this movie without knowing much about it besides it being about a criminal case that involves capital punishment. My expectations weren't really that high, I just wanted to be entertained for an hour and a half, unfortunately this movie did not cut it. If you've watched any other movie or TV show involving criminal cases or jury trials you can pretty much predict everything that is going to happen within the first 10 minutes of the movie and the cornier you guess the better. This movie hit every cliché there is at least twice. I guess you might have to give the actors some credit for keeping a straight face while saying their lines. The actors are pretty much the only reason I gave this 4 stars, the story itself deserves a 1, since a 0 doesn't exist. I certainly can't recommend this movie to anyone. If you think about going to see it I recommend you rent yourself a copy of any John Grisham movie or watch Law and Order Trial by Jury.

Retired lawyer Mac (Modine) receives a telephone call from a judge who wants him to defend Pete Thompson (Wayne) who was arrested for killing Angela, his girl friend, and he has no memory of what happened that fateful night.

This has all the feel of a made-for-TV movie, but very slow, perhaps too slow. We wait, too often, for characters to say their lines to a point we get tired of waiting and we scream out the lines we think are forthcoming. And, most times we are correct.

We understand about predictability, and we go along with it because we know that it's in the telling that the story works. But, here it was just too slow. Maybe that is why Mac's legal assistant, Mindy, goes somewhat overboard with her exuberance which was a complete contrast from everyone else. In other words she was too bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when that was not called for, but the director allowed it. I thought she was annoying because of it, but, maybe she knew this needed some life. She wasn't wrong. Some may think she was a breath of fresh air in here. Hmmm………….

The clues were good, but there was no suspense or tension, and for a courtroom drama that hurts big time. Some logic flew out the window at times. Can't mention what logic as that gives away too much. Sorry (but it had much to do with motive, shhhhhh………..). The audience was forgotten. You know, the more I think about it, maybe this wasn't good enough to be a made-for-TV movie. At least I see tension and suspense in many TV dramas. Here everything was monotone, low-key, level, bland. Well, except for Mindy, of course.

Violence: Yes, very little. Sex: No. Nudity: No. Language: No.