This review includes full spoilers. Proceed accordingly. For other movie reviews from me, click HERE:
Angry Comment: Next thing you know, he’ll be reiewing thirty year old legal thrillers!
Dusty: Well, now that you bring it up..
Rating: R
Director: Gregory Hoblit
Writers: William Diehl, Steve Shagan, Ann Biderman
Stars: Edward Norton, Richard Gere, Laura Linney
Release Date: April 3, 1996
Run time: 2 hours, 9 minutes
THE PLOT:
via wiki:
Martin Vail is an arrogant Chicago defense attorney, known for defending undesirable but high-profile clients, including alleged mob boss Joey Piñero. Vail was previously a state prosecuting attorney, but after finding it to be a dead-end career, he became a defense attorney. Fond of the spotlight, Vail is profiled for a magazine cover story, then attempts to rekindle a casual relationship with a former colleague, prosecutor Janet Venable.
Publicly beloved Archbishop Rushman is found murdered and mutilated in his bedroom. Aaron Stampler, a 19-year-old altar boy from Kentucky, is caught fleeing the scene covered in blood and subsequently charged with murder. Vail offers to defend him pro bono. The meek, stuttering Aaron claims to be innocent, but is prone to amnesia and unable to remember what happened about the murder. He claims a third person was in the room. Vail believes Aaron, while the state’s attorney, John Shaughnessy, assigns Venable to prosecute the case and pursue the death penalty. At Aaron’s apartment, Vail’s investigator, Tommy Goodman, is attacked by another altar boy, Alex, who flees. Neuropsychologist Dr. Molly Arrington interviews Aaron about his difficult childhood, his memory lapses, and his missing girlfriend, Linda.
With help from Piñero, Vail discovers that powerful civic leaders, including Shaughnessy, lost millions in real estate investments due to Rushman’s decision not to develop church-owned land, which includes a pro bono clinic owned and operated by Piñero. A passage linked to The Scarlet Letter was carved into Rushman’s chest, which the police interpret as the murder motive and denouncing the archbishop as “two-faced”. Vail and Goodman find Alex, who claims he was searching for an incriminating VHS cassette in Aaron’s apartment. Removing the tape from the archbishop’s closet at the crime scene, thus not properly entering it into the chain of custody, Vail and his team discover footage filmed by the archbishop in which he coerces Aaron, Linda, and Alex to engage in sexual acts. Vail and his team assume that Rushman threatened the youths with eviction from their group home, providing a motive for Aaron to murder Rushman.
Vail angrily confronts Aaron about concealing information, but he denies the accusations, becoming increasingly distressed as he continues to press him. Aaron’s demeanor abruptly shifts from deferential to aggressive, and he chastises Vail for “scaring off” Aaron. This violent personality, calling himself Roy, admits to killing the archbishop but threatens Vail not to introduce the tape at trial. Suddenly, he reverts to Aaron’s docile personality, with no recollection of the episode. Dr. Arrington concludes that Aaron has dissociative identity disorder caused by years of abuse by both his father and, later, Rushman. Vail grows conflicted, knowing that he could acquit his client via an insanity defense, but he cannot legally change his strategy mid-trial.
Vail delivers the evidence anonymously to Venable, forcing her to use the tape as proof of Aaron’s motive, at the risk of tarnishing the archbishop and generating sympathy for Aaron. Shaughnessy demands that she destroy the evidence, but she refuses and introduces it in court. Piñero is discovered murdered, and Vail surprises the court by calling Shaughnessy as a witness. Vail suggests he resented the archbishop for stopping the $60 million land development deal, and accuses him of concealing previous evidence of the archbishop’s sexual predation, and being complicit in Piñero’s death.
The judge intervenes and fines Vail for using the courtroom for his personal vendettas. She also dismisses Dr. Arrington’s testimony as it leans too close to an insanity plea. Vail calls Aaron to the stand, intentionally triggering him to become Roy, who screams obscenities and assaults Venable. The judge dismisses the jury in favor of a bench trial to declare Aaron not guilty by reason of insanity. Vail informs Aaron that he will be remanded to a psychiatric hospital for treatment and likely released. When Aaron expresses remorse for injuring Venable’s neck, Vail realizes Aaron was aware of his actions during the attack, contradicting his supposed amnesia. Aaron commends the attorney for his insight; he brags he murdered Linda and Rushman without remorse. Answering to Vail’s question “So there never was a “Roy”?”, he reveals there never was an “Aaron”. Vail leaves the courthouse through a back door, stunned and disillusioned.
My Review
Great movie.
Edward Norton’s performance in Primal Fear is widely regarded as one of the best acting debuts in Hollywood history – and for good reason This role was his first real acting credit and it was nominated for an Academy Award. The role won him a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor. I confess that it is hard to understand how he didn’t win more awards for this character. Norton’s character moves between being a physically small, soft-spoken, stuttering, Kentucky-accented altar boy named Aaron, to an imposing, room-dominating killer named Roy, and the transitions from one to the other are seamless and believable. However, as if that’s not good enough, the real genius of the performance is that Norton hides a couple of very subtle hints about the film ending’s big reveal, delivered primarily through his eyes and the way he looks at another character or at the psychiatrist’s camera. The glances give us a glimpse of the monster within, but they’re too subtle to give anything away. The effect of this is that you can watch the movie twice and see two different films – the first being what the other characters see, and the second time through, secret in hand, you watch a film about an extraordinarily evil man who masterfully manipulates everyone around him, until chillingly he seems to get away with his crimes.
The story is presented as a legal thriller, and to some extent it is, but the legal setting really only serves as a delivery mechanism for the story’s attempt to present the audience with a moral dilemma. “What should a criminal defense attorney do if he *knows* his client is guilty?” The film opens with that conversation.
Using the vehicle of Gere’s morally gray, sleaze-bag character Vail, the story walks its audience through a situation wherein the typical excuses were made for the villain and then knocked down one by one. First, there is an argument on behalf of the system wherein everyone deserves a fair trial. Second, the story chases leads regarding the idea that maybe someone else did the crimes. Then third, we move onto the idea that maybe the client did do the crime, but he was first a victim, too, of heinous abuse from the murder victim. Fourth, we delve into the complex idea that maybe it was the defendant’s body who committed the crime, but he wasn’t guilty by reason of insanity. How do you decide which personality is the real him, and what do you do if you decide the “real” him didn’t act. As the movie ends, though, all of those excuses are gone. Is the trial fair if it was manipulated unfairly by Norton’s character? Not really. Once we know that “Aaron” was never real, then we not only that there is no scapegoat alternative personality to blame, we also learn that the defendant was never actually abused by the Archbishop, either. “Aaron” must have participated willingly in those sex videos. Given his manipulative tendencies, he may have done those videos as part of a longer term plan to eventually kill the Archbishop. Perhaps he even manipulated the clergyman into making the videos. One by one, the arguments usually given by society on behalf of perpetrators are eliminated and we are left with a monster and our original question about defense attorneys and guilty clients.
As the movie ends, the defendant is on the precipice of getting away with it. He appears destined for some sort stint with a psychiatrist and then he will likely be released back into the public – perhaps even within a month. We do not get to find out what his lawyer (Gere) does with the big reveal. “What do you do when you know your client is guilty?” Gere’s Vail seems to choose to do nothing. He has good reason to choose nothing. First, the bad guy already tricked the psychiatrist and Vail can’t prove a confession happened. Second, after publicly establishing his client’s insanity, in such a dramatic public way, it would be very difficult to undo that work. Third, Vail is constricted, perhaps to some degree, by attorney-client privilege. So Gere’s Vail has to decide how much he wants to make an enemy of a psychotic killer who will likely be walking the streets again in a month, regardless of his efforts.
We don’t know what Vail chooses, but it appears he’s going to look the other way. What do we think about him for making that choice? What do we think about our legal system if he does make that choice? It’s a really clever, well-acted story, that leaves the audience with a lot of things to talk about as the credits begin to roll, and plenty of motivation to watch the move again, with fresh eyes and a knowledge of the film’s final twist.
Primal Fear has an excellent ensemble cast. In addition to Gere – who was outstanding as a jaded sleazy lawyer (with good intentions), I also really enjoyed the performance from Laura Linney as his court room opposition and love interest. It feels like she always plays the same character, but she makes every movie she’s in better so I don’t mind. Shaughnessy was played by John Mahoney (who you might remember as Fraiser Crane’s father.) He was fantastic as a corrupt lawyer. The late Andre Braugher (Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Homicide: Life on the Streets) was Gere’s underling co-counsel and had mostly a comedic role (he kept using “allegedly” incorrectly), but it was a fun character. Maura Tierney (ER, NewsRadio) was also a co-counsel. She didn’t have a lot to do on-screen but it was fun to see a familiar face in the background of a lot of scenes.
This is definitely a movie that earns its R rating. The murder of the Archbishop is mostly off-screen, however we see gruesome crime scene photos and hear about the crime’s extremely violent details throughout the film. We also see a brief clip of the sex scene that served as an alleged murder motive for much of the story, so though brief, there is some nudity in the film, too. The profane language runs more or less from beginning to end. The topic of of Catholic clergy sex abuse is a key plot point, too. Needless to say, if you have triggers, you’ve been about as warned as I can make you. Proceed with caution.
If you watch the film as a lawyer, or as someone who expects your legal thrillers to be realistic, you’ll probably be disappointed here. As I said, I viewed this story as a morality tale wearing a courtroom setting as a costume. If you have a high bar for legal system accuracy, I suggest that you lower it a bit. The vibe and aesthetic is much less about courtroom accuracy and much more along the lines of film noir, though subtly so.
Overall, I really enjoyed the movie and definitely recommend it – provided you are an adult who has read the content warnings. The story is extremely clever – so much so that you’ll want to watch the movie a second time after you find out the film ending’s big twist. The moral question asked by the film is such that you’ll find yourself wanting to talk about it with someone when the movie is over. I’d recommend watching this with someone if you can. The acting is great, but Norton’s performance in particular is exceptional and he throws in just enough subtle clues that the rewatch will feel like it pays off if you do it. (Or you’ll convince yourself that you see clues that aren’t there – which works out in pretty much the same way.) It’s worth your time.
Have you seen Primal Fear? If so, what did you think?
