After an enjoyable read of Scott Turow's novel, I settled down to watch Alan Pakula's film. I was somewhat disappointed, and not just because of the worn videotape. It is a thin retelling of the story without the rich inner reflections of the book where accused prosecuting attorney Rusty Sabich narrates in the first person his trial on a charge of killing a fellow prosecutor and femme fatale Carolyn Polhemus.
Adapation is always a bitch, as Charlie Kaufman wonderfully demonstrated in his film "Adapation" but it works when the film makers realise that they are making a film and not précising the novel. Alan Pakula himself did a very impressive job when he adapted 'the Woodward-Bernstein expose of Watergate, "All The President's Men" and produced a fine film. Here, despite excellent casting and first rate acting, what you see up on the screen, with all the moody, gloomy interiors, is a hard-to follow turgid courtroom drama.
The book is an excellent account, written from first-hand experience, of what it's like to be a US-style prosecuting attorney in a large mid-western city as well as being a reasonably intriguing thriller. However, I have trouble with the character of the "victim", played with all stops out by Greta Scacchi. It's true there are women who play on the inability of men with power to behave themselves and they are a convenient plot device, but we finish up not with a character but a stereotype. In the novel Turow does try, with not much success, to divine the reasons why Carolyn is what she was, but the film-makers simply abandon any attempt to explain her otherwise than to hint via her ex-husband (who does not appear in the novel) that she might be some kind of fraud. Anyway, I always feel that the amount of sex that goes on incidental to legal practice is greatly exaggerated, and someone like Carolyn comes along about once a century. In fact the film and the book share one problem in common the men are real enough but the women are caricatures.
Turow is a far better writer than John Grisham, but somehow Grisham's books transfer better to the screen. In fact it seems the worse the book the better the adaptation. However there are some moments when the actors transcend their material, particularly Raul Julia's zen-like performance as defense counsel Sandy Stern. And it has to be said that Greta Scacchi does provide a reason for a prosecuting attorney on the cusp of middle age to throw caution to the winds and engage in an affair. Harrison Ford puts in his usual reliable performance but is somehow not in the centre of things; it might just be the gloomy cinematography but I remember very few close-ups of him.
Adapation is always a bitch, as Charlie Kaufman wonderfully demonstrated in his film "Adapation" but it works when the film makers realise that they are making a film and not précising the novel. Alan Pakula himself did a very impressive job when he adapted 'the Woodward-Bernstein expose of Watergate, "All The President's Men" and produced a fine film. Here, despite excellent casting and first rate acting, what you see up on the screen, with all the moody, gloomy interiors, is a hard-to follow turgid courtroom drama.
The book is an excellent account, written from first-hand experience, of what it's like to be a US-style prosecuting attorney in a large mid-western city as well as being a reasonably intriguing thriller. However, I have trouble with the character of the "victim", played with all stops out by Greta Scacchi. It's true there are women who play on the inability of men with power to behave themselves and they are a convenient plot device, but we finish up not with a character but a stereotype. In the novel Turow does try, with not much success, to divine the reasons why Carolyn is what she was, but the film-makers simply abandon any attempt to explain her otherwise than to hint via her ex-husband (who does not appear in the novel) that she might be some kind of fraud. Anyway, I always feel that the amount of sex that goes on incidental to legal practice is greatly exaggerated, and someone like Carolyn comes along about once a century. In fact the film and the book share one problem in common the men are real enough but the women are caricatures.
Turow is a far better writer than John Grisham, but somehow Grisham's books transfer better to the screen. In fact it seems the worse the book the better the adaptation. However there are some moments when the actors transcend their material, particularly Raul Julia's zen-like performance as defense counsel Sandy Stern. And it has to be said that Greta Scacchi does provide a reason for a prosecuting attorney on the cusp of middle age to throw caution to the winds and engage in an affair. Harrison Ford puts in his usual reliable performance but is somehow not in the centre of things; it might just be the gloomy cinematography but I remember very few close-ups of him.