"I don't have to believe you. I don't care if you
are innocent. I'm your mother, your father, your priest."
Enduring Genres and an Awkward Confession:
The courtroom drama is one of the oldest film genres in Hollywood, and if done well, it has the potential to force its audience onto the edge of their seats using only snappy dialogue and passionate acting. Safe for westerns and courtroom dramas, I personally have a hard time enjoying old movies that are generally considered all time master pieces, such as the films of Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles. I do realise how technically groundbreaking films like Citizen Kane and Rear Window were and how atmospheric and gripping Vertigo and The Third Man must have been back then, but being an 18-year-old kid from the instant-living social media age who grew up with nothing but cartoons and reality TV, most of these older classics just don't appeal to me from an entertainment standpoint. However, there are some old films that do manage to reel me in, especially courtroom dramas such as 12 Angry men and To Kill a Mockingbird, and having just realized this a few months ago, I decided to embark on a one-genre-marathon, and last night that lead me down the road of Primal Fear, a 1996 thriller starring Richard Gere, Edward Norton, Laura Linney and Frances McDormand.
A Shady City Inhabited by Even Shadier People:
Primal Fear is a bleak and chilly movie that takes
place in a murky Chicago littered with crime and corruption; a place where
radical hot shot defence attorneys like Martin Vail (Richard Gere) are
generally considered to be the dirtiest criminals of them all. Vail is a very
smooth and very handsome lawyer with a big talent for making powerful friends
and an even bigger talent for getting criminals off the hook, and as such, he
is one hell an arrogant and immoral bastard. Vail is always on the border of
breaking the confines of the law himself, and the only set of rules he seems to
respect is one that he has came of with himself; one that allows him to live with the
things he has done in the past as well as the present. Vail is so fond of public
attention that he decides to defend a dimwitted 19-year-old boy with a stammer
by the name of Aaron Stampler (Edward Norton) in a case about the murder of a
beloved archbishop pro bono, simply because the case is as high
profile and media influenced as it happens to be. What our arrogant main
character fails to realize is that the upcoming trial might not be as simple
and straight forward as he initially though it was, and when the disturbing
truth slowly starts to show its ugly face, Vail is caught in a sticky web of
lies, deceit, money and murder that he can't seem to wrestle himself out of.
The Impressive Ensemble:
This film succeeds in most of the things that it
set out to do in my opinion, but it also has a fair amount of minor
flaws and obvious conveniences as well. The thing that I
liked the most about it also just happens to be the films strongest asset by
far, and that is the well rounded and brilliantly acted characters portrayed by
Gere, Linney, McDormand and Edward Norton especially. Richard Gere plays the
main character in the film, and his turn as Martin Vail is one of the best
performances I've ever seen him deliver, mainly because of how many different
mindsets he has to master over the course of this movie. This man goes
through a wide variety of ups and downs both professionally, personally and
morally, and the fact that I was so invested in him as a character, in spite of
all his arrogance and pretentiousness, is a testimony not only to Gere's
brilliance but to Steve Shagan and Ann Bidermann's fine characterwriting as
well. Watching this sleazy lawyer twist his way in and out of Chicago's
social layers both figuratively and literally was a real joy to watch, and when
he has his big moments of revelation and personal realization, Gere underplays
his character's emotions in such way that I found myself feeling both sorry and
resentful towards him at the same time. However, as much as the film benefits
from Gere's subtle slimeball performance, it is Edward Norton who ends up
completely stealing the show in the end.
His role as Aaron Stampler in Primal Fear is Edward
Norton's feature film debut, and it landed him a golden globe statuette and an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor. He was 27 back then. Norton has
always been one of my personal favourites, but no matter how many great things
I had heard prior to witnessing it myself, I had no idea just how incredible
this man already was at such a young age. The character that he portrays in
this film is a very disturbed and emotionally scarred young individual who
appears to have been caught at the wrong place at the wrong time, and even
though the character does suffer from a few script related issues, Norton does an
awe-inspiring job with the material that he has been given. I mentioned that
Gere’s performance was great because of his ability to display a wide variety
of different emotions, but when compared to Norton’s incredible range of facial
expressions, voices, body postures and characteristics, Gere looks like a
stoned cartoon cardboard cut-out. Aaron Stampler has a condition that
forces Norton to play several different roles in the same movie, pretty much identical to the
way he went on to do it in Leaves of Grass in 2009, and it is almost surreal
how good he is at flipping his character 180 degrees in a matter of seconds in
this film. Gere, McDormand and Linney all play vital and well portrayed
characters that helped mold this movie into what it is, but none of them come
even close to matching the sheer amount of raw talent and range displayed by
Edward Norton in his debut role as Aaron Stampler.
Six Star Characters in a Three Star Movie:
In terms of the actual world that Norton, Gere and the
rest of cast find themselves in, there sadly is not that much to write home
about. In spite of its very well realized characters and some very snappy and
occasionally hilarious dialogue, Primal Fear ends up becoming a picture perfect
example of how the sum of a lot of great individual things sometimes turn out
to be worth a whole lot less than first anticipated. We have all seen the basic
premise of the plot done a thousand times before: A shady
lawyer/cop/journalist/private investigator takes a job that doesn’t seem that
interesting or difficult in the beginning, only to find out that there is a
much more sinister reality lurking just beneath the surface, which ends up
making him question his own morals and integrity. The way in which Gere’s character
shows these inner demons is also rather wooden and uninspired to put it mildly,
because instead of coming up with a smart or innovative way of displaying
Vail’s declining trust in himself and his methods, someone decided to go the
cheap route and add a sub plot about this journalist who is in the middle of
writing an article about defence attorneys. The way I see it, this is a blatant
excuse to have Vail specifically say the
things that the director and the writers wants the audience to think, without having
to come up with something that will display
it instead. The journalist doesn’t even have more than four or three lines in
the entire 130-minute movie, and the sole purpose of his character was to pop
up whenever Gere’s character needed a wall to talk to, so that the audience could get to know how he is feeling at specific point in time. This is extremely lazy writing in my opinion,
and these specific scenes ended up reducing my over all impression of the movie
quite a lot.
Another thing that turned me off about this movie, is the
way in which it handles the whole mystery aspect of the thriller genre. I do
not mind it when courtroom have a twist or a revelation near the
end of the plot in order to throw the audience for a loop, but I do not always
think that it is the right way to go either. The shocker in this film actually
worked quite effectively and initially had me grinning like a 12-year-old who
had just found his first playboy magazine, but the credits had not even started
rolling before I was beginning to find several things about it that did not make sense. We are not talking about major things that ruined the entire
film or anything of that magnitude, but if I was to watch the movie again, I am
pretty sure that I would be able to find several “Well, that just doesn’t make
any sense at all!”-moments, especially concerning the character of Aaron
Stampler. Some of those do not even require repeat viewings, and there is at
least two other rather iffy details about some other characters that I can
think of right now, one of them being the alcoholic judge played by Alfre
Woodard. The film spends a lot of time specifically showing us how she always
has a drink in her hand, both during and in between trials, but it never has any
effect on the plot whatsoever. She does not seem the least bit drunk in her
behaviour or in her decision making even once throughout the film, and I was
left quite puzzled as to why this completely irrelevant detail was added to her
character.
Even though its story is somewhat campy and
unremarkable, Primal Fear is an extremely well acted film that benefits from a
whole bunch of trustworthy main characters and a virtual heap of clever and sometimes funny dialogue. It is a great film in terms of pure entertainment value, and
even though it hits a few glaring misses and fails to revolutionize its genre
in even the slightest way possible, I would recommend anyone who likes a good courtroom
drama with great characters and an easily digestible plot to check it out. Norton’s
performance alone makes it completely worth it, and as a whole, Primal Fear has
earned my seal of approval. (4/6)
Primal Fear IMDb page here
Primal Fear trailer here
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