People are voting emotionally.

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Reversal of Fortune is a dramatization of a real-life attempted murder case, as documented in the book by the same title which was written by Alan M. Dershowitz, defense attorney to the main suspect, Claus von Bülow. The film works as a solid little courtroom drama with an intriguing story, a clever script and an impressive cast; but it doesn't go the extra mile into something more than a daytime TV movie. It tries hard to break the mold - most notably, by having much of the film narrated by the victim - but at heart, it remains a very plain legal drama; and emotionally, it maintains a dry, distant coldness that doesn't allow the viewer to care about anything that's going on. That feeling of emotional disconnection leads to a film with a steady pace, with no highs and lows, and with no real climaxes or tension. In other words - rather dull, and unless you really pay attention to the details of the case, there's nothing much to grab onto.It's also worth mentioning that the film's poster, as well as Jeremy Irons's Oscar win, is more than a bit misleading, because Irons and Glenn Close aren't really the main characters, though the story revolves around them; and in fact Irons's performance is completely over-the-top and certainly not up to the standards he set two years earlier with his masterful work on Dead Ringers. The majority of the film revolves around Ron Silver, who plays Dershowitz himself; and while Silver's performance is understated and quiet, it's also the strongest one in the film. But it's just not enough to give it any emotional or moral weight and to keep the whole thing together, because the viewer doesn't care about Dershowitz winning or losing the trial any more then they do about Von Bülow being found guilty or not.

After seeing the previews, you can never get Jeremy Iron's voice out of your head, when he replies to a question with "you have no idea".Very effective narration by the great Glenn Close. His children also some into play, as well as the man playing Allen Dershewitz, and his whole legal team.Yes, you know he'll be acquitted but the telling takes the entire movie. I haven't seen it in many years, but parts of it just don't leave your memory. I do think that Sunny Von Bulow was a very troubled soul. Perhaps troubled by having too much money and everything she wanted for the asking.You've got to have the TIME to see the whole movie and appreciate its many twists and turns. But well worth the effort. And well worth seeing Jeremy Irons nail the part.

All I knew that it was a courtroom drama of some type. Thus I was pleasantly surprised that it isn't really courtroom bound; the film consists mostly of famous lawyer Alan Dershowitz working on his latest case which the audience is familiarized with through the generous use of flashbacks. The film is concerned with a rich woman who is in a coma following an overdose of some kind. Her less wealthy husband has already been convicted of her murder and it's up to Dershowitz and his crew of student aides to overturn this conviction in a higher court.The film is diverting enough not to be a drag but it isn't particularly memorable. The main flaw is the narration from the comatose woman that adds nothing and doesn't mesh with the sober tone of the rest of the film. The apparent purpose of this framing narration is to give the victim (and actress Glenn Close) more screen time but this throws off the pacing in a few spots. Still, the film seems to do a fairly good job of covering the facts

On 21st December 1980 Martha ("Sunny") von Bülow, the wife of the aristocratic Danish socialite Claus von Bülow, collapsed at the family's mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, and fell into a coma from which she never recovered. (She eventually died in 2008). Claus was accused of attempting to murder his wife by injecting her with insulin. The prosecution alleged that his motives were financial; his wife, an heiress in her own right, was considerably wealthier than him, and it was alleged that after her death he hoped to use her fortune to marry his mistress. At his first trial Claus was convicted and sentenced to thirty years imprisonment. This verdict was quashed on appeal, and he was subsequently acquitted in a second trial. There have been a number of good films, such as "In the Name of the Father" and "Let Him Have It" which have told the true stories of real-life miscarriages of justice, but "Reversal of Fortune" is not really a film of this type. As Claus von Bülow was eventually acquitted, the film-makers could not, without inviting a writ for libel, imply that he was guilty of the attempted murder, but for some reason they seemed equally unwilling to state definitively that he was innocent. (Possibly because they were unwilling to offend that large section of American public opinion which had taken a dislike to a supercilious European aristocrat and had judged him guilty). Consequently, we do not see very much of his life with Sunny (and what we do see is shown in flashback), and we see nothing of the first trial in which he was convicted. Jeremy Irons was awarded the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of von Bülow, although I have never understood why. It is not in my view Irons' best performance; he has given better ones in "The French Lieutenant's Woman" and "The Mission", which came before "Reversal of Fortune", and in the likes of "Waterland", "The House of the Spirits", and even "Damage", which came after it. None of these films even brought him a nomination. Nor in my view was this the best acting performance in 1990; that to my mind was Kevin Costner in "Dances with Wolves", although Gerard Depardieu might also have had a claim for "Cyrano". The Academy, however, doubtless felt that Costner would have to be content with "Best Picture" and "Best Director" and that to give him a third award might make him big-headed. As for Depardieu, the Academy has always had a bias in favour of American movies and against foreign ones, especially foreign-language ones. (In 1990 no actor had ever won "Best Actor" for a foreign-language performance). Irons' performance here is not a bad one, but it is to my way of thinking too one-dimensional to be worthy of an Oscar. He plays von Bülow as a cold, self-absorbed individual, speaking throughout in the sort of aristocratic British accent that today even most British aristocrats would find a bit too fruity for their tastes. (Although von Bülow was Danish by birth, he was educated in England). He never displays any real emotion; neither the tragic fate of a woman he once loved, nor the prospect of having to spend thirty years in jail, can rouse him to any display of feelings. Although the film never directly states that von Bülow was guilty as charged, we never feel for him the sort of sympathy we would normally feel for a man wrongly accused, and on an emotional level it would be all too easy to visualise Irons' character as a man quite capable of trying to murder his wife for her money. Indeed, in many ways the film is more about von Bülow's lawyer Alan Dershowitz than it is about von Bülow. (This is not surprising, given that it was based upon Dershowitz's book about the case). Dershowitz is portrayed as a left-liberal radical lawyer, who takes the case less because he is convinced of his client's innocence but because he believes that important principles of law, particularly those relating to the admissibility of evidence, are at stake. The film concentrates upon the appeal proceedings in which Dershowitz persuaded the Rhode Island court of appeals to overturn the original conviction, but appeal hearings, which largely deal with technical points of law, do not generally make for great excitement, and the chance to make the film a courtroom drama was passed up. Unfortunately, the film does not find any alternative sources of excitement. The story is too slow-moving for my liking and the overall emotional temperature is far too cool. Whereas in films like In the Name of the Father" and "Let Him Have It" I could empathise with the plights of Gerry Conlan and Derek Bentley, in "Reversal of Fortune" I ended up not caring whether von Bülow was acquitted or not. 5/10