Tag Archives: Court drama

Suspect Review

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This review is of the TV-14 edited version of the movie. All thoughts below should be addressed as such as a review of the unedited version would be more negative

It’s time for a big mystery about who the true culprit is. Prepare for a lot of red herrings and a ton of people all trying to make this as crazy as possible. I always like a good court case so that made this film pretty fun and we also have some jury tampering going on which spiced things up. There is a completely unnecessary romance plot trying to get in the way though.

The movie starts off with a guy shooting himself and a lady gets murdered by the river. A suspect named Carl is picked up. He’s homeless and can’t hear or speak which makes it difficult for him to explain what’s going on. Kathleen is assigned to defend Carl which she is not thrilled about but she doesn’t really have a say in the matter. Carl isn’t being very helpful either and has an attitude issue where he keeps on attacking people. She needs to try and get past that to find out the truth but all signs point to Carl being the villain. He was seen going through the victim’s belongings and was conveniently around at the time of the murder. Fortunately Kathleen does have help from one guy, a juror named Eddie who is a lobbyist and used to getting things done. Will he be able to solve the case or will her sense of ethics get in the way?

A big focus in the movie is that of course this is completely not allowed. Jurors can’t try to investigate a case that they are in and vigilante justice is frowned upon. Jurors cannot interact with the defense or prosecutor at all or it would be a mis trial. Eddie doesn’t care about all of that though because he wants to see to it that justice is done and after some convincing, Kathleen gets on board with this as well. Now the question is, do you as the viewer go along with it?

Well for me it’s a definite yes. There’s a lot of things I don’t agree with in the justice system. The fact that I could hold the literal smoking gun of the murderer in my hand and it wouldn’t count if it wasn’t turned in as evidence in time or came out after the trial is a shame. The fact that you can have the crime on tape, but it would be inadmissible in court depending on how I got it is crazy too. So of course you need rules around the jurors so that they wouldn’t all be vigilantes but if they are able to find something out then I say that’s fair game.

So the fact that we actually have a film where a character is able to jump into the court process and get stuff done is great. This is exactly what I’ve been hoping for the whole time here and that part’s really solid. Now the characters aren’t always smart about this like heading into the main research library together to look at old files since that’s where the judge or other jurors would be if they needed intel but for the most part they’re discreet about things. If anything it’s probably easy to conspire together in most circumstances because people ultimately aren’t paying that much attention to the jurors.

Kathleen is a decent main character even if at first you can be annoyed waiting for her to accept Eddie’s help. As he says, “I thought the whole point was to find the truth right?” It’s a really good argument as well because if your client is going to get life in jail or something then you really have to do your best to win. Once she’s on board then they make for a good team. Ultimately Kathleen knows her stuff and is fairly quick to adapt when the situation isn’t going well.

Eddie is really the standout character here though. Initially he didn’t even want to be a juror but once he was the guy got interested in the case and did some digging right away. Deep down he still believes in justice and maybe working in such a corrupt field helped him out with that. So that was good to see but of course the romance does hold him back somewhat. Eddie is the kind of guy who does whatever it takes to get his objective including affairs and while this romance is supposed to be real, it just feels like it’s out of left field.

There is no reason for the characters to like each other except if they just need a desperate fling or something. Additionally there just isn’t time for this because they’re busy trying to solve a huge case right? The romance doesn’t enhance the film and should have certainly been cut out. Meanwhile the film didn’t do a great job with Carl if you ask me. Regardless of if he’s innocent or not, the guy was caught red handed stealing, he actually attacked several police officers including stabbing one of them, tried to murder Kathleen when he first saw her, etc. It gets to the point where it doesn’t matter if he’s innocent because he just committed a bunch of other crimes.

Imagine if the film ended with him being innocent of the murder charge but then still going to jail for all of the other stuff? Because that’s basically what happened. Yes, Carl’s been through a lot but it doesn’t ultimately excuse him from all the bad stuff that he’s actually done. If we were to give him a pass for all of that then it would actually undermine the legal system far more than all the juror stuff going on.

I’d argue it also makes the situation even more unlikely for Kathleen to be quite as helpful as she was. You’d think after nearly getting murdered that would be it. Also the film does need to throw in some danger so we have a psycho running around with a knife too. I would have switched out that plot with more of the political stuff since Eddie’s subplot never gets much of a resolution. The closest we get to that is when his side wins on one of the issues and he is visibly upset rather than being happy about it. I’d say that’s in line with how he’s become a lot more ethical now but it’s still not really closure per say.

Still the mystery should keep you engaged which is the important thing here. There’s a lot going on at all times and of course there are a ton of twists all throughout the movie. You won’t want to miss a beat here and the ending is pretty fun. We even do get a chase scene near the end where someone has to run from someone holding a knife and it’s an interesting scenario to try and put yourself and imagine how you would play things out. Imo one thing you have to do is find a way to make the elevator get stuck so you can’t be followed. Jam a coat and other clothes in the middle to prevent the doors from closing or something.

Overall, Suspect is a pretty good movie but it definitely does have a lot of unnecessary material in it as well. You only need so many red herrings in one movie after all. Cutting out the romance would have been good so we could focus completely on this being a mystery thriller as the heroes get closer to cracking the case. Maybe more screen time into the actual court proceedings as well. I felt like the prosecutor was completely destroying the main heroine purely from an arguments perspective so as the juror I’d be leaning on a guilty verdict but maybe seeing some of the deliberations could have helped with that or more of the counter arguments since we didn’t get to see it all. I also wouldn’t have minded some more scenes on the political end with Eddie really making waves and manipulating everyone. He definitely does seem good at his job and ultimately that works out well for everyone here. If you enjoy a good court drama and don’t mind some vigilante material then this one is all set for you.

Overall 7/10

The Exorcism of Emily Rose

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It’s time for a film based on a controversial case in Germany. Essentially there was a girl who was having visions and started acting crazy. Some believed she was possessed by a demon while others believed that she had psychosis and needed medication. She decided to go with the exorcism strategy instead, but it failed and so she ended up dying. The film focused on the court case which followed this while relying on flashbacks to fill in the gaps of the past.

It’s definitely not my kind of movie. Well, to address the case, I’m going to assume that she was simply very sick and not possessed. The topic of possession is always very complicated. I’m personally of the opinion that Christians cannot get possessed. At least not in the current age. It’s possible in the past that a Christian could get possessed as a test of faith or a way to illustrate God’s power to others. A child was possessed in the old testament after all, but there are two reasonings for it that wouldn’t necessarily go against my theory. One is that as she was a child, she had not yet become a born again Christian. As such she did not have any protection yet. Of course, even if she died while being possessed that wouldn’t doom her to Hell as another belief I have is that if you have not yet been given a chance to become a Christian before your death, then you still may if you would have become one. Since God knows the future, it’s conceivable (And probable) that he takes this into account. After all, it wouldn’t be very fair if you died in a bombing when you were 3 years old and must now go to Hell. It’s an exception depending on how you look at it or just simply a case of God knowing where you should be going and sending you there.

The other way the child could have been possessed is simply because Jesus had not yet died and so we weren’t given the Holy Spirit. I believe that our protection is a lot stronger now since through Jesus death on the cross we all received the Holy Spirit. Before that, times were certainly tougher even though you shouldn’t worry about the tribulations since it will all be worth it in the long run.

The girl was stated to be a devout Christian who was a Catholic. In this case that means she still believed in the death and resurrection of Jesus, but also believes the Pope and the Church to have greater power than the average person and can be a way to salvation. That gets a little murky since Jesus is the one and only way to Christ, but I’m not here to debate Catholic vs Christian beliefs and haven’t studied up on it enough to ensure I wouldn’t make mistakes. I’ll just say that all of this gives me plenty of reason to doubt that she was possessed. I personally think she was just suffering from psychosis and had a lot of bad hallucinations that caused her to believe this. The mind is pretty powerful so hallucinations can absolutely seem real to the individual who is being affected by them.

It’s definitely a sad story and a pretty awful way to go. I suppose the film does a good job of showing how bad the whole situation is. Naturally the flashbacks go for the “demon is real” route since if it went too ambiguous it wouldn’t be much of a movie and this can also make the scenes more intense. The dream of sacrificing yourself to help others see the light doesn’t really seem like something the Virgin Mary would say. I also don’t remember her becoming an angel…..but it made for an intriguing scene. I believe that self sacrifice and suffering is a big part of the Catholic religion but hopefully that doesn’t fall into the being saved by works as opposed to repentance but again I’m starting to digress. Lets move on from that.

Back to the film. The court scenes are handled pretty well with the lawyers getting sarcastic and the Judge being fed up with both of them. It leads to a lot of back and forth even if some of the witnesses do seem kind of eccentric themselves. I just like court room scenes and whether the witnesses bring up valid points or not, I just like the atmosphere. If the whole film had been the court scenes then I would have enjoyed it quite a bit more.

Overall, This film is based on a real event enough so that I won’t give it an actual score. If you want to learn more about the case I’d recommend watching a documentary or following along through online. After all, if you watch the film you’re simply getting a very dramatized enactment of the story where you can’t trust the facts quite as much. I suppose the theatrical visuals will make it more entertaining but if you really want to learn about the topic, odds are that you’ll want to go straight to the source. 90% of the time that’s the best way to go about it. It’s not a super violent film or anything, but it does go into detail and again, it is trying for shock value and gritty realism so bear that in mind. As for me, I’ll just keep being thankful that my court case wasn’t too graphic. It was kind of rigged…but that’s a story for another day.