So much average

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I simply loved this movie. I am normally not a fan of vin diesel movies. However, his role and acting in this movie was superb. The plot was also beautifully written and the direction and presentation was great. However, there is a concern that the movie presents gangsters as quite normal.

A great story and a greatish performance are largely for naught in Find Me Guilty. Director Sidney Lumet's rambling approach to his narrative and disconnected feel for his main character stop this movie from ever rising above the level of "eh". There are individual scenes and moments that are a great deal better than that. Lumet never manages to assemble them into anything of value and it often seems as though he doesn't want to. I could be wrong, but this whole motion picture felt like Lumet had no inkling of who Jackie DiNorscio was and why he was that way. He also appears to have been uncomfortable with portraying this mob story either too irreverently or with too much grit and grime. Find Me Guilty comes out weirdly tepid and uneven. It's not awful. It's just not very good.Jackie DiNorscio (Vin Diesel) was a New Jersey gangster who got swept up in the biggest and longest criminal trial in American history when the feds tried to take out an entire mob family in one fell swoop. Prosecutor Sean Kierney (Linus Roche) assembled a mountain of evidence that took almost two years to get through. Lead defense attorney Ben Klandis (Peter Dinklage) tried to get around that by painting it all as anti-Italian stereotypes. Mob boss Nick Calabrese (Alex Rocco) became a seething cauldron of anger under the pressure and Judge Finestein (Ron Silver) tried to keep the proceedings from falling apart. Complicating it all was Jackie's efforts at defending himself, which relied more on humor than the law and more on Jackie's absolute loyalty to his friends and his chosen life than anything like the truth.Vin Diesel is almost great as Jackie. I'm not sure why anyone should be surprised at that. You can tell the difference between a guy who can act and one who gets by on attitude and personality. Diesel can act. He's no Dustin Hoffman. He's not even Val Kilmer. But he can act. The only thing holding Diesel back here is that Lumet and company have given him an extremely binary character. There's joking, sentimental Jackie and then there's street thug Jackie who's never more than an inch away from violence. He switches back and forth between them like a blinking neon sign and Diesel is given no chance to play anything in the middle or find a whole that encompasses both. If, at the end of this movie, you can explain why Jackie is so different from every other mobster we see, you're much more observant than I am.Lumet is just as ineffectual when it comes to the trial. He uses actual court transcripts for some of the dialog, but it's almost as though he trapped himself by doing so. Lumet obviously decided that his story would be about Jackie and this triangle of people who orbited around him in court. The prosecutor, the lead defense attorney and the judge, however, are an uneasy fit. Only Linus Roche is given anything like an independent character to play but Lumet can't decide on what kind it should be. Sometimes he's the overweening heavy opposite Jackie. Sometimes he's the man fighting the good fight. Sometimes he's the tragic victim of the absurdities of the legal system. Dinklage and Silver don't have enough to do to vacillate like that. They're just props that stand there opposite Jackie and do what needs to be done to facilitate his scene.And while Lumet was obviously aware of the comedic ridiculousness of the trial, Jackie's behavior and how it all worked out, it sure appears as though he was hesitant to embrace it for fear of portraying violent criminals in too light a fashion. In a post-Goodfellas world, showing gangsters to be buffoonish scamps was a bridge too far.My ultimate impression is that Lumet, and the audience, would have been better served if he had tried to make a darkly sarcastic film about the trial itself with Jackie merely comic relief in the overall drama. Imagine making a movie about Watergate where the main character was G. Gordon Liddy. That's what Find Me Guilty is like, though probably a bit funnier. It's still not something I can recommend.

okay, so I'm scanning the shelves of the local Video Ezy and I see the cover of this DVD about a million times but i continually ignore week after week, then one Friday night I decide to give it a go. Thinking that it would just be the usual Diesel-esquire performance with rippling biceps, terrible dialogue and some sort of poorly executed comedic undertone, let me tell you ladies and gentlemen......... that I was thoroughly entertained.Not only is the content extremely compatible to film, Diesel seemed almost BORN for this role. The witty inside humour of mob antics is in abundance throughout this feature that can be compared to the likes of goodfellas and donnie brasco but has a sincerity to it at all the right moments a la my cousin vinnie etc. It's a joy to watch Diesel nail this role with great enthusiasm and i can say that from now on when you get a ignore a film enough your probably missing out.

Great performance by Vin Diesel in here. I always just thought of him as an actor who did not have the ability to take on a non-action leading role. Wow did he prove me wrong here. Find Me Guilty was really a revelation in itself and for Diesel.The acting like I just said was great from Vin Diesel. Diesel has shown in the past some great supporting performances. With this movie he clearly showed that he can give a real acting performance. The way he displayed his character as a loud mouth, slick talking mafia man was just so genuine and real. He made me laugh every five minutes and still was able to draw me into the movie as a serious character. The supporting performances were nice here to from Peter Dinklage and Alex Rocco.The directing was very good if not great as well. When it comes to any film involving court Sidney Lumet is the man who should direct it. This is the man who directed 12 Angry Men and The Verdict which are probably the two of the top five court movies ever. This time though he is able to perfectly balance the comedy and drama of this movie to make this film very engaging and exciting to watch. Sidney Lumet once again proves to me at least why he is one of the most creative and best movie directors ever.The writing was perfect for this movie. In a way the movie was making fun of itself which is always nice to see in these type of comedies. Together with Diesel the writing made for some many laugh-out-loud scenes. Sidney Lumet with his directing and writing really is able to show that a real-life courtroom drama can realistically funny too.My advice is to definitely watch this movie if you have not. It is not a superficial meaningless movie and believe it or not is a little inspiring. Creativity in movies at its best.