Throwback to the bestseller legal-thriller adaptations of the ‘80s & ‘90S . . . and just as blandly unnecessary. Those books great as Father’s Day gifts when Walter Isaacson didn’t have a new historical biography in stores. Once upon a time, Hollywood would have bidding wars to option these prestigious-for-a-day tomes, targeting Sydney Pollack or Alan J. Pakula to overproduce them, always running two hours+ so we knew they were important. Plus, multiple Oscar® noms which alas never won. It's precisely how director Gregory Hoblit moved from quality tv cop shows to the Big Screen via PRIMAL FEAR/’96 a decade before doing this. Here, Anthony Hopkins (who might have been given the same role back in the ‘80s) is the wealthy, older husband who bumps off his unfaithful wife with a How To Get Away With Murder Plan. Enter prosecuting D.A. Ryan Gosling, taking on a final case before moving to commercial law and a better tax bracket. But Hopkins has a trick in store, representing himself to set up a mistrial. But this is Hollywood and the Postman Always Rings Twice. Especially if you've got Goslng’s doe-like eyes. Ultra slick and a millimeter deep, Hopkins phones in mini-me Hannibal Lector vocal tics, sweeping the floor on auto-pilot. Even Hoblit seems to know how pointless these things had become by 2007, dropping the non-stop camera moves once we get into court. His surrender to mediocrity retroactively exposing those older films as equally empty vessels,
DOUBLE-BILL; *Hard to believe films as dull, predictable and self-regarding as PRESUMED INNOCENT/’90 (that’s Pakula) and THE FIRM/’93 (Pollock) were taken seriously at the time. Pollock paid a high price for it. Only 59 when THE FIRM came out, he never made another good film.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Hopkins may have top-billing, but Gosling gets the showy star’s delayed entrance, not coming on screen till the third reel.
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