Kangaroo Court

By Frank Rich

. . . AND JUSTICE FOR ALL

Directed by Norman Jewison

Screenplay by Valerie Curtin and Barry Levinson

. . . And Justice for All may be the worst thing to happen to Baltimore since the War of 1812. If this movie is to be believed, Maryland's largest city has a legal system that would make a police state seem appealing. The judges are all psychotic or perverts or worse; the lawyers are all self-serving hypocrites; the cops all regard suspects as "scum." When criminals go to jail--usually on trumped-up charges--they invariably get murdered shortly after incarceration. Indeed, if the American hero of Midnight Express had come from Baltimore, there would have been no reason for him to escape the Turkish prison and return home.

Not that Justice is completely devoid of heroism. Al Pacino stars in the film, playing an idealistic attorney who tries to buck the system. His is a difficult and tedious task. Pacino gets into so many screaming matches and moral dilemmas that he often seems to be acting all the roles in Dog Day Afternoon at once. As it happens, he acts them well, but not well enough to distract us from the enveloping silliness of the movie that surrounds him.

Justice appears to have been intended as a devastating satire of the U.S. legal system--a fine idea in principle. But by inflating their target to ridiculous proportions and then firing at it with cannons, the screenwriters have lost their subject completely. The true and complex inequities of American jurisprudence remain untouched; the white-collar scandals that have actually afflicted contemporary Baltimore are never even mentioned. This film would have us believe that the courts would be first-rate if only a few bad guys (played by John Forsythe and Jack Warden) were removed from the bench. Such simple-minded solutions only add to the real problems that this movie mindlessly dramatizes.

A director schooled in the stylistic demands of black humor might have coaxed a few laughs from the material. Director Norman Jewison (Rollerball, F.I.S.T.) is not that man. His movie's helter-skelter tone swivels irrationally and usually heads straight for a dead end. Mad scenes, broad comic bits and mournful monologues are so indiscriminately mixed that the audience often does not know how to respond. At one point the movie comes to a halt so that we can go on a supposedly comic helicopter ride. There are also pointless interludes in which the hero visits his humorless grandfather (Lee Strasberg) at an old-age home; these scenes swing wildly between sentimental cliches and tasteless jokes about senility.

Still, it is entirely possible that . . . And Justice for All might yet advance the worthy cause of decent justice. Just watch what happens if the city fathers of Baltimore decide to hire a good libel lawyer. -- Frank Rich

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