Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Good concept, poorly executed.

Absolutely Fantastic

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Phil Spector is a HBO film written and directed by David Mamet who has form when it comes to doing courtroom thrillers. The film opens with a disclaimer that describes the film as a work of fiction 'inspired' by actual persons in a trial.It is a work of fiction that provides a slanted account of what happened on that fateful night when Lana Clarkson died and suggests that Spector is innocent.It also helps that Al Pacino's Phil Spector is a more likable personification than the actual person has more right to deserve. A bewigged Pacino of course rants and raves as his lawyers probe him, try to get under his skin especially as they rehearse the cross examination.However Phil Spector to many people is a legendary music producer who became an eccentric recluse in the early 1970s and was seen very little of until he stood trial for murder.The film suggests that Spector paid the price of other celebrities being found not guilty in recent years. The film itself is not a courtroom drama. It is a study of the evolving relationship between Spector and one of his lawyer's played by Helen Mirren who is at first sceptical and then thinks there is more than a reasonable doubt that he is guilty.However even with a high powered cast that film is not as interesting or riveting than it should be. The revisionist tone also feels that the victim is somehow forgotten because she was not famous enough therefore she does not matter. However who does really care for a has been music supremo who took credit for songs he may not had written or even had much involvement in producing and was increasingly disconnected from real life?

***SPOILERS*** Excellent portrayal by actor Al Pacino of legendary pop music pioneer as well as song writer & producer Phil Spector who's high flying career in the music industry came to a sudden crash on February 3, 2003. It was then that aspiring actress Lana Clarkson was found shot to death, with a bullet in her mouth, in his mansion, or castle as he called it, with Phil being the only one at the scene. Arrested for murder Spector hired top NY defense attorney Bruce Cutler, Jeffery Tambor, the guy who successfully defended mob boss John Gotti to represent him in court. As things turned out Cutler had to drop out of the case due to prior commitments leaving his assistant Hellen Mirren, Linda Kennedy Baden, to defend him.Spector who's talent was only matched by his bazaar and arrogance behavior soon turned out to be the his own worst enemy at his murder trial. Being difficult to control by his lawyer Miss. Baden Spector despite the evidence that could be proved him innocent turned the public against him not in his accused murder of Miss. Clarkson but his totally indifferent to the charges against him as if they were some kind of joke on Spector's part. It at first seemed like a slam dunk in favor of Spector in the blood splatter evidence that seemed to show that he was nowhere near Miss. Clarkson at the time of her death. Thus proving that Clarkson's death was the result of either a suicide or accidental shooting not murder but his behavior in court,which included wearing a number of ridicules wigs,made the jury overlook those important facts in his murder trial.***SPOILERS***It was after a hung jury at his first trail that Spector was retried that in the end sealed his fate. With a frustrated Linda Baden doing everything to convince the jury to find Spector innocent she also contracted pneumonia undercutting her attempts to successfully defend him.In the end and after the film, which was released before the jury verdict, was over Spector in his second trial got all that was coming to him. Not in that the jury finding him guilty of murder but in him doing everything he could to make that possible by his strange and bazaar antics both in court and in public. What would have been a run of the mill made for TV movie was elevated by both actors Pacino & Mirren in the leading roles of Phil Spector & Linda Baden who gave the film the first class acting that you almost never see in made for TV movies. Pacino as the tragic music mogul Phil Spector who made a total mess of his life and those, like his estranged wife and children, near and dear to him and Linda Baden as attorney Mirren who defended her unstable client to the best of her ability. Only to have him blow the case, which could have been won by a first year law student, out of the water and her client ending up getting a 19 year prison sentence.

Up front I'll state I'm a fan of the music legend Phil Spector BUT I was a fan of football player and actor OJ Simpson.A killer is a killer and both are now in jail.However this film is slanted ,and rather interesting,that Phil was innocent.However,as a former juror who had to judge a case on all evidence as it was presented,I'll trust the jurors who convected Phil in his second trial.That all said,it is interesting in that IF this film is truly accurate,it would indeed explain the first case deadlocked jury.All that said, Helen Mirren as Linda Kenney Baden,the defense attorney, has a advantage over Al Pacino as Phil Spector in that you weren't going to "know"her character as you know Al's.Both were still outstanding and I never got board watching them weave their point of view of a accident death rather than the second degree murder conviction he finally received.

I didn't expect to come out of this liking Phil Spector. But I kinda did.Based partly on his famously big hair, I considered him a whack job who'd done well earlier in life, then spiraled way downward. Thanks to an extremely compelling screenplay by David Mamet and a bravado performance by Al Pacino, I came away if not exactly feeling comfortable with Spector then at least considering the possibility that he was convicted of being weird and having a checkered past -- and not necessarily for being a killer.Helen Mirren excels as hard-as-nails defense attorney Linda Kinney Bader (wife of the famed forensic pathologist), who starts out skeptical, but (thanks in part to the defense team's $1-million fee?) comes to believe in the innocence of the extremely eccentric but probably not insane music producer.I recognized Jeffrey Tambor as someone from TV -- which shows I knew not -- but he wasn't convincing as powerhouse attorney Bruce Cutler, vaunted defender of mobster John Gotti. (I wasn't even aware he was supposed to be the tough-:guy lawyer till I read the closing credits.)Back to Mirren, who was interesting to observe as her character battled pneumonia throughout Spector's first trial -- "If you're not sick, you're not working hard enough," she mutters through Kleenex and gulps of Alka Seltzer. I had never questioned Spector's guilt until watching Bader's vigorous work here, which resulted in a hung jury. (We learn in the epilogue that she was too ill to represent Spector in his re-trial, which resulted in his conviction and 19 year-to-life term, which he's now serving -- God only knows how -- in California State Prison at Corcoran.) Spector had a history of erratic behavior that had not previously resulted in violence. However, at least one former consort testified that he had used a gun to prevent her from leaving him. Could something similar have happened with the hapless Hollywood hanger-on Lana Clarkson? Mamet presents a good argument against it. As Spector points out, this suicidal wannabe would have done anything he wanted and he had absolutely no reason to murder her. Yet we also see scenes in which he unleashes a formidable temper.Spector seems to have suffered freom a persecution complex. Others get away with stuff, but not him (Robert Blake comes to mind). To hear Spector tell his story, the no-name cocktail waitress walks into his life and inexplicably destroys his own.This made-for-HBO production is quite compelling and well worth viewing. See if it changes your mind, too.