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Top 25 Courtroom

Dramas Ever: Order in

the Court!

What are the elements of a great courtroom drama? A

case that's more complicated than it appears, lawyers

who grapple with moral quandaries, witnesses who offer

surprises in their testimony, a connection to suspensefulevents outside the courtroom and (just maybe) Matthew

McConaughey.

McConaughey gave up pre-law college studies to pursue

acting, but he's made up for it by playing trial lawyers in

such movies as 'A Time to Kill,' 'Amistad,' and now 'The

Lincoln Lawyer.' In this new film, based on the character

created by author Michael Connelly, McConaughey plays

Mickey Haller, a slick Los Angeles defense attorney

whose office is the back of his sedan. His latest case,

defending a playboy (Ryan Phillippe) accused of

attempted murder, presents Mickey with some

http://www.moviefone.com/celebrity/ryan-phillippe/1940760/mainhttp://www.moviefone.com/movie/the-lincoln-lawyer/50214/mainhttp://news.moviefone.com/bloggers/gary-susmanhttp://www.moviefone.com/movie/the-lincoln-lawyer/50214/mainhttp://www.moviefone.com/celebrity/ryan-phillippe/1940760/mainhttp://www.moviefone.com/celebrity/matthew-mcconaughey/1937316/main


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unexpected twists and moral dilemmas.

It's no wonder that McConaughey is drawn to such

dramas. The courtroom is an inherently dramatic stage,

where conflict is built into the proceedings, where

everyone has a part to play but none of them knows what

the outcome will be, and where life-and-death issues aredistilled into individual, personal stories.

Prompted by the release of 'Lincoln Lawyer,' we've

compiled a list of the greatest courtroom dramas of all

time. See if you think 'Lincoln Lawyer' will ultimately merit

a place on this list, and let us know if we've left out any of

your favorites.

25. 'A Time to Kill' (1996). In this John Grishamadaptation, McConaughey is a Southern lawyer defending

a black man (Samuel L. Jackson) who has killed the

bigots who raped his pre-teen daughter. McConaughey

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.

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must also protect his own family from violent Klansmen,

forestall a potential race war, and resist the charms of a

comely law student (Sandra Bullock). There's a lot of

shameless pandering and button-pushing in the movie,

none of which makes it any less effective or cathartic.

24. 'Intruder in the Dust' (1949). The best film version of

any William Faulkner story, 'Intruder' stars the dignified

Juano Hernandez as an aloof black man unjustly accused

of murder in the Jim Crow South. He has an able white

lawyer, but the movie's real hero is the lawyer's nephew

('The Yearling's' Claude Jarman Jr.), a boy who knows

the defendant to be a man of integrity and is one of the

few white people in town who can see past race and is

willing to sift through the evidence to find the real killer.

Years before 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' or even the advent of

the civil rights movement, the film paints an unsparing,

documentary-like portrait (it was shot on location in

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New 'Deadpool' Red-Band Trailer Hits Next Week a day agonews.moviefone.comMovieFone.com (AOL) Phil PirrelloPhil Pirrello4.

Faulkner's hometown of Oxford, Miss.) of how justice in

that time and place was far from blind to racial

differences.

23. 'Kramer vs. Kramer' (1979). Most of the movie is

about how Dustin Hoffman learns to be a good single dad

to his little boy, but it's the last third of the film, which

contains the custody battle that gives the movie its title,

that's the real gut-puncher. In the courtroom, ex-wife

Meryl Streep's lawyer successfully smears the responsible

dad we've seen Hoffman become, painting him instead as

a reckless cad. The moral: No one's really a winner in a

legal system that only amplifies the bitterness that tears

families apart.

22. 'Primal Fear' (1996). Richard Gere is an

unscrupulous, showboating defense attorney who gets his

http://www.moviefone.com/movie/kramer-vs-kramer/16242/mainhttp://www.moviefone.com/movie/primal-fear/2103/main


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karmic comeuppance in the form of a murder defendant

(Edward Norton) who appears harmless but whose

twisted psyche harbors horrible secrets. There's a

massive plot twist here that makes all the smart

characters played by smart actors (Gere, Laura Linney,

Frances McDormand, Alfre Woodard, and others) look

like suckers, but then, viewers who saw this movie when it

first came out were happily suckered as well. It was

Norton's debut, and we had no idea then what a protean

talent he was; his astonishing performance depends

largely on his anonymity. Not entirely, though. Seen

today, his is still a clever, chilling performance that makes

the whole movie work.

21. 'Breaker Morant' (1980). In this real-life drama set

during the Boer War, Edward Woodward and Bryan

Brown give feisty performances as Australian officers

under British command who are court-martialed for war

http://www.moviefone.com/movie/breaker-morant/3467/main


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crimes. Their we-were-just-following-orders defense

probably wouldn't wash today in a post-Nuremberg world,

but it's also clear that the Aussies are scapegoats being

railroaded in order to serve the British Empire's political

aims. What's really on trial here is the dehumanizing

nature of modern guerrilla warfare, in which expedience

trumps honor and the line between soldiers and

murderers is easily blurred.

20. 'Philadelphia' (1993). The first mainstream Hollywood

movie to address AIDS and the prejudices surrounding it,

'Philadelphia' smartly uses the courtroom as a forum to

ask viewers to look beyond those prejudices to see issues

of basic fairness. As the ailing defendant wrongfully fired

from his law firm, Tom Hanks is a little too saintly and

perfect (he's like a gay Sidney Poitier character), but as

the everyman who is the audience surrogate in learning to

look past Hanks' sexual orientation and disease to see a

http://www.moviefone.com/movie/philadelphia/8666/main


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man worthy of respect and justice, Denzel Washington

gives one of the warmest, most human performances of

his career.

19. 'A Civil Action' (1998). John Travolta uses his

formidable reserves of charisma as real-life lawyer Jan

Schlichtmann, fighting a deep-pocketed corporation on

behalf of townsfolk made ill by polluted water. But this is

not an 'Erin Brockovich' story about a heroic underdog

winning against all odds; rather, it's about a hotshot who

discovers that his passion and courtroom skills can take

him only so far in a system where the deck is stacked

against those of limited means, where litigation is a game

of financial chicken in which whoever blinks first loses.

http://www.moviefone.com/movie/a-civil-action/4931/main


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18. 'The Caine Mutiny' (1954). Humphrey Bogart is

unforgettable as Lt. Cmdr. Queeg, the petty, power-mad

ship captain who sparks a mutiny and a court-martial over

pilfered strawberries. He's not afraid to look

unsympathetic, even ridiculous, but he's still Bogart, so

he's still the most commanding person in the movie.

http://www.moviefone.com/movie/the-caine-mutiny/6440/main


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17. 'Witness for the Prosecution' (1957). Charles

Laughton is on top of his game as a wily old defense

attorney, and Marlene Dietrich is at her sly best as the title

character, who's the sole alibi witness for her husband,

accused killer Tyrone Power, but who chooses to testify

against him instead. Billy Wilder's adaptation of Agatha

Christie's hit play is full of the cynical snap that is Wilder's

trademark.

http://www.moviefone.com/movie/witness-for-the-prosecution/1039532/main


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16. 'The People vs. Larry Flynt' (1996). As a First

Amendment martyr, pornographer Flynt (Woody

Harrelson, in his career-best performance) tends to treat

the courtroom as a circus, showing up in a diaper made

from an American flag or pelting the judge with oranges.

He's the only one present who seems to realize how

ridiculous it is that it keeps falling to the publisher of

Hustler to defend free speech rights. After all, he notes, if

the Constitution will protect a scumbag like himself, it'll

protect us all. Milos Forman's direction finds both

outrageous comedy and genuine pathos amid the Flynt

spectacle; as an artist who fled communist

Czechoslovakia, Forman knew all too well the importance

of free expression, which can't afford to be picky about its

champions.

http://www.moviefone.com/movie/the-people-vs-larry-flynt/3323/main


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15. 'Paths of Glory' (1957). Kirk Douglas is a French

officer in World War I who's given the thankless task of

defending three poor grunts being court-martialed as

scapegoats for the bungling of their superior officers. In

his first of many anti-war movies, Stanley Kubrick expertly

mixes the surreal spectacle of combat with the stark

emptiness of the courtroom and the prison cell.

http://www.moviefone.com/movie/paths-of-glory/5227/main


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14. 'In the Name of the Father' (1993). Director Jim

Sheridan addresses the Irish "Troubles" through the prism

of a story about a father and son at odds. Both Gerry

Conlon (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his father Giuseppe are

wrongly imprisoned for an IRA bombing, based on

coerced confessions. The lifelong tensions between the

hardworking D.A. and the son he considers a

disappointment continue behind bars, as their lawyer (a

tart-tongued Emma Thompson) spends 15 years trying to

get them released. The acting is top-notch, especially

Day-Lewis, as a ne'er-do-well who finally learns, via the

most extreme circumstances, how to make his father

proud.

http://www.moviefone.com/movie/in-the-name-of-the-father/8736/main


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13. 'Presumed Innocent' (1990). In this adaptation of the

Scott Turow bestseller, prosecutor Harrison Ford finds

himself on the other side of the aisle when he stands trial

for the murder of a colleague who was also his mistress.

No one does righteous, wounded anger like Ford, but

here, his usual slow burn becomes a slow dawning of

horror as he gradually discovers over the course of the

film what really happened, forcing him to learn new

meanings for words like "guilt" and "punishment."

http://www.moviefone.com/movie/presumed-innocent/1027855/main


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12. 'Anatomy of a Murder' (1959). Never one to shy away

from controversy, director Otto Preminger touches on

several taboos with this drama about an army lieutenant

(Ben Gazzara) accused of killing the bartender he says

raped and beat his wife (Lee Remick). James Stewart

shines as the aw-shucks defense lawyer who must

determine what really happened.

http://www.moviefone.com/movie/anatomy-of-a-murder/1001303/main


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11. 'In Cold Blood' (1967). Truman Capote's celebrated

true-crime novel comes to the screen with a similar

mixture of documentary-like realism and poetic

psychological portraiture. The standout performance

comes from Robert Blake (yes, that Robert Blake) as one

of the two haunted, tormented killers.

http://www.moviefone.com/movie/in-cold-blood/1017173/main


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10. 'The Passion of Joan of Arc' (1928). Carl Theodor

Dryer's almost unbearably intimate film is shot mostly in

close-up, with Renee Falconetti giving one of the most

emotionally intense performances in film history as the

martyred French warrior heroine. The dialogue comes

from the actual transcripts of Joan's heresy trial, but in

this silent drama, Falconetti says it all with her face,

registering extreme states of determination, terror, and

beatific joy.

http://www.moviefone.com/movie/the-passion-of-joan-of-arc/1026713/main


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9. 'The Accused' (1988). Jodie Foster won her first Oscar

for this drama (loosely based on a true story) about a

gang-rape victim who finds her own behavior and sexual

history put on trial. She's a revelation as a slattern who is

nobody's role model, but who learns (with the help of

lawyer Kelly McGillis) to stand up for herself as she

defends the right of all women not to be raped.

http://www.moviefone.com/movie/the-accused/13925/main


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8. 'A Man for All Seasons' (1966). Paul Scofield has the

role of his lifetime as Thomas More, who risks all by

sticking to his principles in opposition to his friend Henry

VIII's intention to divorce Catherine of Aragon to marry

Anne Boleyn. His firm stand isn't just about religious faith

in Catholic dogma but also about a humanist faith in the

primacy of law.

http://www.moviefone.com/movie/a-man-for-all-seasons/1022118/main


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7. 'Judgment at Nuremberg' (1961). No less a figure of

moral rectitude than Spencer Tracy presides over this

distillation of the postwar trials of alleged Nazi war

criminals. An all-star cast that includes Burt Lancaster,

Richard Widmark, Marlene Dietrich, Maximilian Schell,

Judy Garland, and Montgomery Clift pays homage to the

notion that sometimes, all that can be done to serve

justice is to give testimony recounting injustice, to

remember at a time when most people would rather

forget.

http://www.moviefone.com/movie/judgement-at-nuremberg/19528/main


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6. 'The Crucible' (1996). Arthur Miller's play about the

Salem witch trials gets a gritty, impassioned retelling here,

with Daniel Day-Lewis in what might be called the Paul

Scofield role as the principled martyr and Scofield himself

doing a 180 from 'A Man for All Seasons' as the chief

inquisitor.

http://www.moviefone.com/movie/the-crucible/3143/main


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5. 'Inherit the Wind' (1960). This exhilarating version of

the Broadway hit about the Scopes Monkey Trial stars a

rumpled Spencer Tracy as Clarence Darrow, arguing for

the teaching of evolution in Tennessee public schools

against a grandstanding Fredric March (as William

Jennings Bryan). Gene Kelly is tops too as a cynical

journalist based on H.L. Mencken.

http://www.moviefone.com/movie/inherit-the-wind/1017464/main


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4. 'A Few Good Men' (1992). The king of all court-martial

movies, thanks to a crackling Aaron Sorkin script (based

on his play) and a cast firing on all cylinders, including

Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, Kevin Pollak, Kevin Bacon,

Kiefer Sutherland, J.T. Walsh, and of course, Jack

Nicholson. All together now: "You can't handle the truth!"

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3. '12 Angry Men' (1957). Sidney Lumet's debut feature

takes place entirely in the jury room, but it never feels

stagy or less than compelling, thanks to the inherently

dramatic deliberation over whether to convict or acquit a

murder defendant. Henry Fonda and Lee J. Cobb stand

out as the chief antagonists among the jurors.

http://www.moviefone.com/movie/12-angry-men/661/main


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2. 'To Kill a Mockingbird' (1962). This adaptation of

Harper Lee's novel stars Gregory Peck as everyone's

favorite movie lawyer/single dad, Atticus Finch. His

defense of a black man (Brock Peters) framed for the

rape of a white woman in the segregated South offers a

surprising array of life lessons for young daughter Scout -

and for the moviegoer as well.

http://www.moviefone.com/movie/to-kill-a-mockingbird/4339/main


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1. 'The Verdict' (1982). Paul Newman gives the best

performance of his later career as Frank Galvin, an

alcoholic attorney who sees in a medical malpractice case

against a Catholic hospital his last, best shot at

redemption. Arrayed against him is wily old litigator James

Mason, the Boston Archdiocese, the Boston

medical/educational establishment, and the city's back-

room power structure (a specialty of director Sidney

Lumet's), all of whom have no compunction about playing

dirty to win. And yet, David Mamet's searing script (based

on Barry Reed's novel) dares to hope that the justice

system can, when we all take our parts seriously, reflect

our highest aspirations.

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8/2/2015 Top 25 Courtroom Dramas Ever : Order in the Court! - The Moviefone Blog


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3 Comments Sort by

هللا لبهلو ن

عوض

مه

·في إلم ر ت

لمترجمة ألولي

atلخبير

u do not chose ur dad

Like · Reply · Jul 16, 2015 8:24pm

Santosh Srivastava ·Schaumburg, Illinois

How come my cousin vinny is missing the list....

Like · Reply · 2 · Jun 11, 2014 10:10am

Jarka Liskova ·

Bronx, New York

it should cr own the list as its # 1.

Like · Reply · 1 · Dec 14, 2014 10:42am

Rahul Muddadah ·VLB Janakiammal College of Engineering and Technology

Top

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top 25 courtroom dramas ever_ order in the court! - the moviefone blog

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