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Better Late Then Never

A Masterpiece!

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

I'll make it short - cheesy contrived movie dialogue and characters acted as well as possible by first rate actors. Watchable even though it's all far fetched and silly. However the screenwriter and director treat us like dunces with a silly ending that is not in keeping with the characters , their personalities and motivations, and just ends how it ends for dramatic value. Instead of drama, we just reject the whole premise as idiotic.....

This is a thriller that keeps you on the edge, gripping from start to finish, especially in the courtroom scenes. It's a story about defense lawyer Teddy Barnes (Glenn Close), who represents Jack Forrester (Jeff Bridges) - charged for the murder of his heiress wife, Page (Maria Mayenzet).While the plot objectives may appear overused by today's standards, the story to me is still fresh and intriguing, and the above average acting, especially that of Glenn Close, helps keep the move interesting. Robert Loggia as Sam Ransom was OK, but his foul mouth was a turn off. Jeff Bridges gave a rather monotonous performance.The courtroom scenes were definitely the highlight of the movie, with the back and forth between Teddy Barnes and the antagonistic prosecutor Thomas Krasny (Peter Coyote). The subplot of Teddie's ex-husband and her kids blended in well with the movie too.Overall, it's a good, thriller with some unpredictable moments.Grade A-

You will believe in it all along and at the end you will say you knew it all the time, but you will be lying and you must not tell a lie because you are under oath, and you have cut the cherry tree down, really and indeed.It is not another film on justice, on the "miscarriage" of a prosecution and the biased bigotry of a prosecutor who had a black man in one case and then the perfect social climber in another case. Strangely enough that prosecutor just neglects some elements that should have prompted an investigation for a serial killer, but then the case would have evaded his political hands (Elections! Elections! Elections!) and the FBI would have come into the picture, maybe, since they were just starting to speak of profiling in Quantico, Virginia. The subject of this film is how easy it is to manipulate American justice and even American judges if you have a good lawyer and if you can manipulate your lawyer into believing you. And that's the whole case. Add to that some unprofessional elements and you have the American trap for everyone instead of justice.The ex-prosecutor who is playing defense councilor has forgotten all her ethics in her bathroom one happy morning and she has the relation with her client that is strictly forbidden by all rules, mega rules and mini rules even. So she creates a pure hellish pit for herself and everyone else in this society, leaving a sociopath and psychopath social climbing serial killer on the run. I can't say more without deflowering your virginal interest for the end, but be sure we knew it all along and yet it is not exactly what we had foreseen and predicted in our mind, not at all even because. . . in my deepest and most trustworthy mind of mine we could have sworn it was a little more complex.Enjoy the suspended suspense that is blown up at the end into thousands of shattereens.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

Once past the lurid sex murder in the opening scene you'll find a fairly absorbing (but, in retrospect, hardly memorable) legal drama, with crack attorney Glenn Close defending newspaper publisher Jeff Bridges (who may or may not be innocent) against unscrupulous DA Peter Coyote. The scenario holds together well enough despite some not unexpected shortcomings (awkward domestic melodrama and a color-by-numbers romance), but the resolution is secondhand Hitchcock and curiously anticlimactic. Nothing profound here, just taut, unsophisticated entertainment, with a San Francisco Bay Area background put to good use.