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Guilty As Sin
I have to apologize for being ME!
1993
Review: May 27, 2008
Director: Sidney Lumet
Starring: Rebecca DeMornay, Don Johnson, Jack Warden
If you like.
THE SETUP:
Womanizer who killed his wife hires hot shit female lawyer to get him off.
DISCUSSION:
This is one of those legal thrillers that seemed vaguely like an interesting idea in the 90s, and also has some strands of DNA from the ____-from-hell movies, also of the 90s. This is directed by a clearly brought-low Sidney Lumet and written by Larry Cohen [It’s Alive, God Told Me To], which was a surprise, and headlines Rebecca DeMornay, recently graduated to leading roles after her bit in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, and Don Johnson, who I believe had just finished with Miami Vice and was possibly Barbra Streisand’s boy toy at the time. I saw it in the theater when it was out, and remember thinking it was better than I expected. I imagine this MUST hail from some sort of airport-thriller novel. Anyway, much of this awaits verification.
We open with a not-unclever credits idea that unfortunately tries to spread way too little over way too long a time. Rebecca is hot-shit sexy lawyer Jennifer Haines. We have only to wait but a few minutes for her to give a big courtroom speech, and get a guilty guy off with a tip from her buddy Jack Warden. So obviously she doesn’t have qualms about defending and releasing guilty people. That night she goes to visit her boyfriend, this dude with a big mustache [good!] and HUGE perm [BAD!] that is… kind of something to see. Rebecca, who, one notes, has gargantuan tits, kneels down and gives her boyfriend head while he sits in his chair at his desk. Funny—that’s how I like to celebrate, too!
By the way, during the earlier trial, we have noticed Don Johnson as David Greenhill sitting in the audience watching. Then we see on the news that he is suspected of throwing his wife out of a high-rise window. The police are engaged in a city-wide manhunt, but nevertheless he just walks unhindered into Rebecca’s office. He wants to engage her as his lawyer. He says he’s a “compulsive womanizer” and essentially a gigolo, saying “That’s my talent—getting women to do what I want them to do.” Now, if you were Rebecca, you might say to yourself “Hey, wait a minite—I’M a woman… maybe he’s trying to get ME to do what he wants him to do!” But no. She turns him down, but has second thoughts and decides to take the case. We find out in here that she started as a paralegal and worked her way up to be the top lawyer in the firm.
So she first gets him out on bail, so he’s free, and they have a few little chit-chats, but nothing you’d expect between a lawyer and client. Mustache Boyfriend tells her to dump him, but she resents that, because she is an independent woman who can make her own decisions, etc. Then there’s a scene which exists only to provide SOME tension [and also to have something to show in the trailer, NOT on the DVD, btw] where he makes a sandwich with an enormous 12-inch butcher knife. If you watch carefully, it’s kind of funny that, because of the size of his knife, he puts approximately 12 ounces of mayonaisse on his sandwich, and poor Don has to pretend like this is normal. But don’t let that distract you from the dialogue, in which Don whines that he is essentially being persecuted for being a womanizer; “I have to apologize for being ME!” and whines about being just a “sex object” that women pick up and drop at their whim. Rebecca tries to drop the case, but faces an ACTIVIST JUDGE who is FED UP with these lawyers who think they can just drop whatever case they feel like, it’s destroying the legal system, blah, blah, so Rebecca is FORCED to continue representing him!
Already it’s somewhat too ridiculous to take seriously [and we’re only 39 minutes in]. We haven’t gotten enough—or ANYTHING—about who Rebecca is and/or her history that would help us understand why she would take on this guy that has red flags sticking out all over him. It would be one thing if the movie played more that she really was attracted to him or can’t pass up a challenge because of her daddy issues or whatnot, but none of that is provided, and he shows up in her office flat-out telling her he likes to mess with competent women, so the answer is either that SHE has some serious psychological issues, or that the movie is just shoddily written. And I think it’s number two.
Then Don drops by the office with a suitcase, which Rebecca's secretary opens straight away, and finds some slinky lingerie inside. It's kind of amusing because there's a male partner there who sees it, and gives Rebecca a look before walking away—as it looks like she's sleeping with her client. So finally Rebecca is waking up to the fact that this guy is a problem, saying it's the "monster client syndrome everybody dreads." Oh… is this common? Like, there's a syndrome? Then it turns out that Mustache Boyfriend is testy because Don showed up at his job, and also shows up while they're at a nightclub, and is implying a relationship all over the place, which really gets Mustache Boyfriend's goat.
SPOILERS > > >
Blah, blah… at one point they play a little "game" in which she asks "hypothetical" questions and he gives "hypothetical" answers, because everything he says is inadmissible, and then it suddenly occurs that this is an amazing way to give deep law exposition… he says "Suppose there were other murders?" and she says "You couldn't be tried for them once this case went through!" and stuff like that. Then Warden has been looking into Don's past and finds that he has a history of fixating on a woman and then killing her—although all details of past murders [and how he escaped charges for them] are left QUITE murky. During this time she pops over to Don's house to search for evidence, and the butler offers coffee. She asks for tea, which causes him to make a huge elaborate continental breakfast with toast and jam arranged just so—I don't know, in my house, you ask for tea, you get TEA—and then when he finally brings it to her, she refuses it and takes off!
So Don's not real thrilled about that little B&E, and beats the shit out of Mustache Boyfriend. Then Don comes over with a black woman who claims to have been with him when he was supposed to have murdered his wife. PLEASE watch as Rebecca puts her acting skills front and center during this scene, at around 1:22:00, including a slight little gasp because she is so suffused with IMPOTENT RAGE! Then they go to court! Then the jury deliberates! Then more classic exposition: "The jury's been out for a week!" Then: the jury just can't decide! And our activist judge—the same one who railed against lawyers dropping their clients—has no problems with juries who make no attempt to resolve their differences after a MERE WEEK, and dismisses the case! Don walks! Then, since realism has been tosses to the wind by now, the ENTIRE COURTROOM clears out in seconds, leaving Don and Rebecca alone in the enormous marble courtroom. He takes the stand and says that he first saw Rebecca a year before and fixated on her, planning the murder of his wife right then, determined to make Rebecca represent him. Shocker! Only, not really. Rebecca can't come forward with her side of the story because it's against the law, and furthermore, with all the lingerie and such, it seems like they were having a torrid affair and he could have her disbarred. Around this time it become pretty obvious that these two are NOT going to fuck at any time during this movie, which is a bummer, because given their whole dynamic, it could have been reasonably hot, especially with Rebecca throwing her principles to the wind and doing something she knows she shouldn't… I'm sure a sex scene is on some cutting room floor somewhere.
So Warden, who may as well be named Wilbur Exposition [father of Basil Exposition], takes Rebecca to his office, then says "You haven't said a word since we left the court!" Then Rebecca gives the expected speech about how she's "looked into the face of evil," and how she has to just kill him, she doesn't care about herself or her career ["Oh! I've got to destroy him!"].
Then Warden gets a crucial, damning piece of evidence! Then Don stops by, burns it, the office, and Warden! Then he visits Rebecca in the law office, which we have repeatedly seen has high balconies one might fall off of in a thematic call-out to the original murder! And Don tells her he killed Warden and that he's going to set up her murder to look like she leaped from the balcony in despair—as though he or no one else had ever HEARD of security cameras. He makes to throw her over, but she grabs him, and—this is one touch I like—you can see that she has nothing left to lose, and fuck it, she is taking that bastard down with her! She braces with her legs and pulls him over! She flips in the air and uses his body as a human cushion. He dies and she is taken away in the ambulance, saying the "lighthearted!" closing line that is required for these movies: "Hell of a way to win a case!" Ha! Ha! Ha! Boy, that sure is funny. I'm not sure I can quite get over that.
< < < SPOILERS END
Yeah, it was not great. Although it could have been worse. Let’s see… problem number one is that Rebecca DeMornay just doesn’t have enough presence to carry a whole movie. She just screams ‘slight,’ and in the last half you can really see her straining to ‘act.’ There’s just something not that compelling about her. Don Johnson also doesn’t have that much of a compelling presence, but he actually sails off with the whole movie just by being so CONSISTENT, which works very well in his favor as a womanizing psychopath. He sets the lever on “complete confidence” and just leaves it there for the whole movie, letting that consistent level of total confidence become his character and—it works! I found myself wondering what a guy who is a total sex bomb—like a younger Antonio Banderas or something—might have done in this role, but I have to say Don really ran with it and is by far the best thing about the movie.
The other problem is that it becomes apparent very early on that this whole thing is utterly ludicrous, and just being drawn out to draw it out. There are any number of points where Rebecca could have gone to the judge—let alone the police—and gotten out of the case, if not pursued further legal action. Aside from the fact that she and Don never really seem to have any lawyer-client consultation. And we just don’t ever find out enough about her character to understand why she would take this case in the first place. It’s so obviously problematic, and she’s a smart woman… it would work fine if there were something about her personality that made the challenge appealing to us, but we never find out anything.
So it’s too bad, because Johnson’s is an interesting character, and the whole concept is a good one, but it’s just underbaked. It’s not terrible and it’ll keep you watching until the end, it’s just a shame to see a movie be mediocre because it planned to be, rather than aiming higher and inadvertetly landing there.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
Up to you, and how much you like those 90s legal thrillers and _____-from-hell movies.
