• It is known and remembered for being Edward Norton’s debut (he’s in some educational anthology film before it technically) and breakout. He would go on to have a massive 1996 following this including Woody’s Everybody Says I Love You and The People Vs. Larry Flynt– but this is his best work of 1996 and the film for which the Academy recognized him with a supporting actor nomination. It is one of the beginning of one of the most promising starts to a career for one of his generation’s most talented actors.
  • Shot mostly on location in Chicago— the bar with the Old Style sign and everyone watching WGN
  • Gregory Hoblit is an old TV veteran– shot episodes of Hill Street Blues, LA Law, NYPD Blues — pragmatic direction- even with talents on his crew like Michael Chapman as DP (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull) who had just shot Chicago in 1993’s The Fugitive (I think there’s an extra cop here that plays a cop in that film) and James Newton Howard doing the score (Michael Clayton, King Kong – Peter Jackson, Glengarry Glen Ross)
  • DiCaprio turned down Norton’s role and Damon was one of the hundreds that apparently auditioned and lost to Norton– but nobody could have been better than Norton in this sort of complex duel role. His Kentucky accent, he’s soft spoken and stuttering as Aaron—- and then with a wave of anger transforms to Roy.
  • The film comes alive when Norton is on screen but it doesn’t suffer without him. The cast is loaded from Richard Gere and Laura Linney in leads — to John Mahoney, the underutilized Frances McDormand (in the same year she’d win the best actress Oscar for Fargo), to Alfre Woodard in support
  • Norton’s anger revelation at the 73 minute mark– he turns from baby-faced innocent.  I have not read this anywhere but I wonder if he used Brad Dourif’s Billy Bibbit character from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest for his character creation. And at the end of the film we get the big reveal- it isn’t exactly The Usual Suspects but it sure fooled me when we finally see Norton’s clapping hands.
  • woefully underrated by many critics at the time of the release- 47 on metacritic– the film’s reputation has right-sized since
  • the courtroom stuff is a little hokey, they take some frustrating leaps and stretches in disbelief
  • Gere, though not as good as Norton, is strong here as well and impeccably cast as the arrogant lawyer- something he would do so well he’d be cast as essentially the same character in 2002’s best picture winning Chicago
  • Not on the top 10 of 1996 but still in the archives
  • Recommend