(I used to work for a legal publication called Lawyers Weekly. I submitted a much shorter version of the following essay for consideration. They passed on it. Oh, how they passed on it. Anyway, here it is.)

Law movies are tidy.

The tidiness of the courtroom dramas starts with a tight structure: crime or accusation + courtroom drama = verdict or settlement. At the beginning there are easily identifiable sides. And at the end there is a "final arbiter," either in the form of a judge, collectively in the form of a jury, or, in the case of a movie like Inherent the Wind, in the form of public opinion. Ostensibly, the arbiter decides who the winners and losers are through a verdict, which results in quantifiable measures: dollars, years in prison, or qualitative degrees of guilt or innocence, which frequently correspond to the black and white distinctions of good or evil. Of course, sometimes the bad guy in the movie gets away with literal or figurative murder, and sometimes a good man is railroaded, but this doesn't make these movies any less "tidy." What matters is that things won't drag on for years; there won't be arbitration, and the verdict or settlement will not be a confusing compromise. Accusation + case = Verdict. End of story.

Within the confines of the hermetically contained story, the writer is given a lot of room to produce a multi-layered (which is not to say subtle) thematic hodge-podge. Law movies are unique in that cases lend themselves to morality tales, to microcosm of greater social morays, to Aristotelian tragedy, to stories of personal discovery and redemption (frequently for the lawyer), and to plain old who-dun-its. To Kill a Mockingbird is a great movie that has some aspect of all of the above.

That's what makes the law genre different than others. On the other hand, what makes the law genre like any other is that law movies are frequently really lousy. However, where as a non-law movie may stink in a hundred different ways, a law movie will frequently stink in a very recognizable and predictable way, because of the inherent narrative avenues the fictitious judicial system provides.

This revelation got me thinking. And when I started to think about how predictably stinky law movies can be, I started to classify the specific type of law movies I hate the most.

The O. Henry Twist Law Movie

The thing about surprise endings is they don't surprise. If a viewer pays even marginal attention to a mystery where all signs point to the guilt (or innocence) of a character, then that viewer can be absolutely certain that the writer is going to throw in a dozy of a switchero at the end. It's a simple formula: if the guy seems persecuted, and sweet, and that he's being screwed by the system, then you can bet dollars to donuts that he's going to turn out to be manipulative and evil. What's most annoying about these movies is that inevitably the only thing the writer really concerns himself with is the big switch. He knows that's all the audience will remember about his piece of junk movie, so the rest of the movie feels flat, dead, and slapped together. The result is that the first 85 minutes become nothing more than a big lazy set up for the "shocker" at the end. If you don't believe me, ask yourself if you remember anything about the experience you had watching Primal Fear other than the fact that you felt ripped off when the twist was that Ed Norton was playing Richard Gere for a chump. (I mean, other than the cognitive disequilibria you experienced trying to rectify how it is that women actually find Richard Gere sexually attractive.)

Unlike an actually movie with suspense, when these movies finally get around to the big twist, that moment nullifies the red herring that is the first 85 minutes, and reminds you of how tedious a red herring it was.

I don't want you to waste your time on these movies. So as a public service let me tell you that that Harrison Ford's wife was the killer in Presumed Innocent. Jeff Bridges owns the typewriter that types elevated "t's" in Jagged Edge, and in Basic Instinct Jeanne Tripplehorn turns out to be that baddie, which is the first surprise, but then at the end there's also an ice pick underneath Sharon Stone's bed, which means . . . who knows. It means Eszterhas is not only sleazy, he's an idiot who doesn't know the difference between clever ambiguity and a muddled mess. Now when your wife/husband/girlfriend/boyfriend picks out any of these movies at Blockbuster, you can say a jerk from Lawyers Weekly ruined the ending for you. You're welcome.

The Cathartic Confession/Hubris Confession Movie

You can't handle the truth! No what I can't handle is the overacting. In reality the answer given in a courtroom to the question, "Did you order the code red?" wouldn't be that "damn right. You want me on that wall. You need me on that wall" nonsense. It would be something more along the lines of "No." Similarly In Malace, Alec Baldwin would not answer the question "Do you have a God complex?" with a diatribe ending with "Playing God? I AM God." He would probably say something more like, "Uhh, I don't know what you mean. I don't play God." But if the defendants responded naturally, then the guilty verdict would have to be based on a well argued, well crafted prosecution built in layers. Writers forgo this approach because it's hard to use reason and rhetoric to intertwine the wires of motive and evidence into a cable, and a lot easier to get the same result with the cast iron rod of, "Ok. You got me. I did it." But in reality, if a lawyer's idea of a brilliant strategy is to ask the person if he's guilty and hope that either a guilty conscious or unbridled pride will force him to tell the truth, then he probably earned his J.D from some barely accredited institution like Suffolk or UConn Law.1

The Law Firm as an Evil Secret Society Movie

Just as Tom Cruse made a Cathartic Confession/Hubris Confession Movie by being in A Few Good Men, he shows up again in this category for his work in The Firm, which is a really lousy movie, even when given the Grisham 4 stroke handicap. However, far and away the absolute worst The Law Firm as an Evil Secret Society Movie ever made was The Devil's Advocate. If you find yourself reading this and thinking. 'Hey, I kinda liked Devil's Advocate." I say with as much restraint and politeness as can be expected that you are a complete moron. How bad is the movie? Pacino, the most ragging, washed-up thespian of his generation ravenously masticates the scenery in the worst performance of his career. He's so bad that he's out acted not only by Charliez Theron, but Keanu REEVES.2 It's a bad bad movie. However, aside from the specific badness of Devil's Advocate the genre is base in that in these law firms and lawyers are evil movies, there lies an undercurrent of anti-Lockeian liberalism, Anti-corporation, and anti-success. Being a lawyer is not a profession in movies. It's a metaphor for wealth and power, and these movies suggest that having either is shameful - which is interesting because these things are directed and acted by millionaires. This of course is not a complete list of bad type of law movies. There are the "Oh, I'm just getting' warmed up!" type movies that are chiefly interested in setting up a big melodramatic closing argument. There are the Erin Brockovitch/Class Action-type touchie feelie movies. There are the "down and to the left" conspiracy affairs. But the point here is not to categorize every lousy sub-genre. The point of this article is to instill within its readers a little caution before they go out and spend 9 bucks on a movie that centers on a case. So be careful out there, and when in doubt don't go if the any of the following names are associated with the film: Cruise, Pacino, Gere, Judd, or Grisham. Besides that rule of thumb, you're on your own.

¹Settle down Suffolk and UConn Grads. That was an obvious dig at two of my friends who went to these two FINE institutions for law school.

²It should be noted that despite the fact that Devil's Advocate may have been one of the top 10 worst movies of its year, it is only the second worst movie ever made starring Keanu and Charlize. The worst being the maudlin and cheaply sentimental Sweet November.