A Baltimore defense attorney (Al Pacino) grows increasingly frustrated with the corrupt and inept judicial system that he is a part of.

CRITIQUE

And Justice For All is a 1979 Al Pacino movie, that sort of represents his first real foray into over-acting; while through much of this he is the nicely-restrained Al, by the end he is doing the kind of high-volume emoting that would too often become a trademark after Scent of a Woman.  Still, Pacino (who was nominated for an Oscar for the role) is the best thing about this movie, a well-meaning but very uneven look at the flaws in the judicial system that mixes humor, serious commentary and melodrama to very mixed effect.

The main problem with this is that there really isn’t a main storyline to build the tale around; instead this story is so episodic and disjointed that at times it simply seems to just lose focus.  Nominally it is about Pacino’s character Arthur Kirkland, who is in every scene here, and who is part of a slew of mini-plotlines here, from several defendants he is trying to get off, to a romance with another lawyer (Christine Lahti, in her first movie role), to visits to his grandfather, to a long comic helicopter ride with a judge (Jack Warden) which seems to have dropped in from another movie altogether.

But ultimately this is about the flaws in the legal system, but unfortunately too many of these storylines have a heavy-handed feel, particularly since they all end with big bursts of drama.  These include Kirkland’s partner Jay (Jeffrey Tambor), who snaps along the way, as well as the fates of Kirkland’s two favorite clients.  The story finally centers on Kirkland essentially being blackmailed into defending a judge he hates (John Forsythe) on rape charges, and to the movie’s credit it makes us wonder how it is going to all come out, even though the ending itself is really rather over-the-top.

By the end this all feels a bit dated; it’s too broad to really be an effective look at the legal system, while too often it feels like the kind of thing that shows like The Practice and Ally McBeal later tackled in more solid, entertaining fashion.  Ultimately there is enough here to make this worth a look if you are in the mood, but it’s sort of all over the place.

THE VIDEO

And Justice For All is presented in anamorphic widescreen. The picture quality is good, not great.

THE AUDIO

And Justice For All is presented in English or Portuguese.  Dialogue, music and sound effects come through clear.  There are English, French, Spanish and Portuguese subtitles.

THE EXTRAS

There is an Audio Commentary by director Norman Jewison that’s a little slow in spots.  But Jewison is a knowledgeable director, and there’s a lot of good stuff here.

Norman Jewison: The Testimony of the Director is a solid 12-minute interview (filmed recently), though a lot of this stuff is also in the commentary.

Barry Levinson: Cross Examining the Screenwriter is a 7-minute interview with Levinson (who co-wrote with Valerie Curtin) talking about the inspiration for the film and what they were trying to do in it; it was also filmed recently.

There are 11 minutes of Deleted Scenes, which aren’t bad in and of themselves, but were obviously cut because they just repeated things already in the script.

There’s a 10-minute Making of Featurette for the Al Pacino film 88 Minutes, which actually looks interesting as presented here, but apparently wasn’t.

Also included is the pilot episode of the Glenn Close TV series Damages.

FINAL THOUGHTS

And Justice For All is interesting, though it doesn’t really work that well; still, probably worth a rental for Pacino fans or others in the mood