And Justice For All - 1979

And Justice For All

I decided to watch this movie for 2 reasons
1)I knew the name from the decent Metallica album (not their best, I know, I know, but there's some great stuff in there, like "Blackened" but this is a whole different story
2)Al Pacino - Yes, although he now spends his career either resting or overacting, in the 70's and 80's he was fucking awesome
3)It's a lesser known movie for those of my generation, I discovered it by chance
Did I say 2 reasons?

Anyway

The movie tells the tale of a lawyer who believes in helping people.
A rebel in the courtroom, litigating against tough unfair or bizarre judges.
One of these judges is an absolute asshole.
Another one wants to kill himself and keeps displaying heavy suicidal behavior.

The lawyers are also pretty crazy
His best friend ends up in the loony bin after one of his clients kills again
Another of his colleagues is too busy to do his job - hence the moral lesson.

Overall, it was a way too moralistic movie about how crooked the legal system is and how the real heroes (lawyers) can save the values of the founding fathers of the great U-S-of-A.

However, the setting
-crappy courtrooms
-dirty streets, corridors, people
-the slang...aah the slang of the 70's, I could write a thesis about this
-no gratuitous token black guy
-the cars
makes it all worthy.

On my personal barometer I would rate it as a 7/10. On IMDB it's at 7.2.
definitely watchable, educative (especially if you love the period), but not legendary.

Trailer