The Whole Truth

Year 13, Day 345 - 12/11/21 - Movie #3,994

BEFORE: OK, I got all (?) my Christmas cards addressed Thursday night, then I got them mailed out on Friday.  It's SO much easier to just send links to download my music, instead of a CD, and I saved on postage this way, too!  If this works, I'll just do this every year, whoever wants the music can still get it, and those who don't can just ignore the link.  What a load off of my mind.  Got my COVID vaccine booster shot AND a flu shot on Friday, too, with no bad reactions except for a sore left arm.  So now I just need to think about finishing the movie year and maybe buying some Christmas gifts. 

Keanu Reeves carries over again from "The Watcher". First he was a cheating husband, then he was a serial killer, now tonight he's a lawyer.  I know, it's tough to say which is worse.  Boy, it sure seems like I'm going to close the year with that new "Matrix" movie, right?  Sorry, if you're expecting that, please prepare yourself for disappointment. But I do want to send a rare Birthday SHOUT-out today to Gabriel Basso, born December 11, 1994.

THE PLOT: A defense attorney works to get his teenage client acquitted of murdering his wealthy father. 

AFTER: Boy, it's been a while since I've watched a good legal drama - probably the last one was "The Trial of the Chicago 7" back in April.  For a murder trial, I guess I'd have to think back even further than that. "The Lincoln Lawyer"?  What was that case about, I barely remember?  I guess that particular plot didn't stick with me, but that's what can happen when you watch 300 movies in a year, and then another 300 the year after that.  The memory is almost full, as they say.  

I think there's a similarity between the two films, in that part of the plots hinges on attorney-client privilege, in both cases the defense attorneys have inside information that could affect the case, only they're withholding it, because they can (or have to).  It's not the defense attorney's job to bring these things up, it's the prosecuting attorney's job to prove guilt, the defense only has to poke holes in the prosecution's case, or bring up enough doubt to keep the charge from sticking.  It's doubly difficult for Richard Ramsay here because his client, the son of the deceased, hasn't spoken since his father's murder, which some witnesses say he took responsibility for.  Without his testimony, though, Ramsay's hands are somewhat tied, he's limited in what he can introduce in his client's defense if he doesn't know his story.  

There are plenty of other suspects, since the deceased was an abusive sort, and since Ramsay's a friend of the family (the deceased was his legal mentor at one point) he knows that's he's the kind of man likely to beat his wife and/or bully his kids. We see him in one flashback teaching his son to swim - the hard way, by throwing him in the pool - and then later when his son is applying for colleges, berating him until he agrees to go to Stanford and not that "other" more liberal, non Ivy-league school.  It's his way or the highway.  So naturally the wife is a prime suspect here, so's the teen boy who lived next door and spied on Mrs. Ramsay in the shower, who also witnessed spousal abuse and may have tried to put an end to it.  

The only evidence Ramsay is able to introduce are photos of bruises on the wife's body, taken the day after the murder.  However, just proving spousal abuse is legally not enough to justify murder, unless the killing was done in self-defense.  But it's not the wife on trial here, it's the son.  I wonder, since the deceased man is played in flashback by Jim Belushi, why Ramsay didn't try an unusual defense, namely that haven't we all wanted to kill Jim Belushi at some point?  Really, a few episodes of "According to Jim" would constitute justifiable homicide, right? Just me? 

Ramsay believes that "everyone" lies on the witness stand in court, which I have to admit is a unique point that I haven't seen mentioned before in legal thrillers.  We're so used to people being sworn in to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth that it's almost hard to then shift gears and think that everyone really lies, to some degree.  But that's perjury, and it's also illegal, but I guess then you have to prove it before you can charge somebody with it. 

I'm not sure how I feel about the younger lawyer character that Ramsay takes on as an associate, I'm not sure her character is all that necessary, except to act as a sounding board, someone for Ramsay to bounce ideas off of when trying to come up with legal strategies.  Also he mansplains his thoughts to her about everyone lying on the stand, this is a method of getting those ideas in the heads of the audience, but the character doesn't serve much of any other real function, which seems like a bit of a waste. 

But, finally, the whole truth is seen in flashback at the end of the film - and it's not something I've seen before, so for that reason alone I think I'll be lenient in my scoring today.  But beyond that, the trial stuff is really basic, cookie-cutter, "Law & Order" season three type stuff.  I'm not going to get involved in the speculation over why Renée Zellweger started looking very different when she came back from a long acting hiatus in 2016, that's her business. I get that nobody ever really looks the same over a period of, say, 15 years, but most people do continue to look like themselves, and she decided she was going to look like somebody else.  Whatever. 

Also starring Renée Zellweger (last seen in "Judy"), Gugu Mbatha-Raw (last seen in "Motherless Brooklyn"), Gabriel Basso (last seen in "Hillbilly Elegy"), James Belushi (last seen in "Wonder Wheel"), Ritchie Montgomery (last seen in "Contraband"), Christopher Berry (last seen in "The Hunt"), Jim Klock (ditto), Jason Kirkpatrick (last seen in "Mudbound"), Nicole Barré (last seen in "The Paperboy"), Sean Bridgers (last seen in "Dark Places"), Jackie Tuttle, Mattie Liptak (last seen in "I Saw the Light"), Thomas Francis Murphy (last seen in "Free State of Jones"), Dana Gourrier (last seen in "Broken CIty")

RATING: 6 out of 10 crime scene photos back at the hotel