Normally a courtroom drama movie sounds quite dull & dreary to most of us.even the most hard-core movie buffs amongst us might be from time to time lured away by movies full of visual effects & wise-cracking humour.
It is an extremely difficult job to conceptualise & create a movie where the climax is a tense, court room scene and the rest of the movie is either in the same court room or deals with events leading up to it.not many of us are able to comprehend legal terms & would prefer to steer clear of such endeavours.
However if such a film is crafted masterfully, peppered with crisp dialogues & brilliant acting, watching it becomes a very enjoyable experience.I have come across a few such movies.
A Few Good Men is definitely one of those movies which I would heartily recommend to all movie aficionados.A friend of mine, whose judgement I trust & whose taste in movies I share recommended it to me.I downloaded it from the internet & watched it one evening after getting home from work.trust me the movie has a few scenes, which I rewinded & watched several times.after a couple of days, I watched the movie again.it just kept on getting better & better.
The premise of the movie is this - Daniel Kaffee(Tom Cruise) is an inexperience US Navy lawyer, entrusted with the defence of two marines accused of murdering a fellow marine of their unit.Naval investigator JoAnne Galloway(Demi Moore) is his senior officer & co-counsel.Kaffee gets the case as he has a penchant for plea-bargains & at first glance, this looks like an open-and-shut case.but is it really so un-complicated or are there deeper secrets lurking?
Jack Nicholson, as the Commanding Officer of the Marine detachment, gives a powerful performance which crackles everytime he is on the screen.Tom Cruise has done a commendable job, though some of his lines are too dramatic & don’t ring true.Demi Moore turns in a subdued performance.the surprise package is Keifer Sutherland, who you get to see only a couple of times, but packs quite a punch.you also get to see Cuba Gooding in a short cameo.
This movie was remade in Hindi as "Shaurya", although there are slight alterations to the basic plot.I have not seen the hindi version, but have heard it is very good.unfortunately due to lack of hype & publicity, it was not very succesfull commercially.the fact that the cast did not include any major filmstars, but consisted of talented actors such as Rahul Bose & Kay Kay Menon did not help either.I would still recommend it over the so-called mega-budget & multi-star block busters, which are quite often so full of style, but no substance.
Do watch either of these movies(or both) & write to let me know if you agree.