There Oughta be a Law!

Lackluster Lady Lawyers on Film

The Accused -- Kelly McGillis plays a hotshot public prosecutor called upon to nail the guys who raped Jodie Foster. When she doesn't nail them nearly hard enough, McGillis persuades Foster to let her prosecute the guys who cheered the rapists on while they were debasing her. This provides the director with an excellent opportunity to reenact the entire rape scene for the benefit of moviegoers who have never raped, been raped, or cheered rapists while they raped rapists. Exploitation, anyone? Jodie is excellent, but the pinball machines in the room where the rape takes place are more animated than Kelly McGillis.

A Few Good Men -- Demi Moore plays a navy lawyer who desperately wants to defend two marines accused of murder. Her superiors decide that the two seemingly guilty marines already have enough problems without getting Demi Moore into the act, so they assign hotshot lawyer Tom Cruise to the case. Cruise spends the entire movie intimating in the strongest possible terms that Demi Moore doesn't know her ass from third base. An interesting, well-made film strongly suggesting that the Federal Government cannot be trusted, particularly if it keeps hiring lawyers like Demi Moore.

Class Action -- Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio plays a hotshot corporate lawyer who must defend an obviously guilty car company against charges that it makes cars that kill people. Representing the plaintiff who is suing the car company is her dad, a bleeding-heart liberal and philanderer played by the irascible Gene Hackman.

Mastrantonio has spent her entire life hating her dad for being a bleeding-heart liberal and philanderer, and has worked long and hard to become a partner in an evil law firm that makes its money by representing evil car companies that make cars that kill people. But at the crucial moment, she betrays her evil client and turns over a key witness to her father. Of all the actresses who play lawyers in this group of films, Mastrantonio is the only one who looks, acts and talks like a lawyer--until she betrays her evil client and turns over a key witness to her father, who will corroborate the company's malfeasance, something no real-life corporate lawyer would ever do, because all corporate lawyers are evil. The movie does contain one great scene, where Mastrantonio's mother keels over and dies in the local courthouse in a kind of theatrical, symbolic demise that God should force all mothers of lawyers to experience.

The Client -- Susan Sarandon plays a recovering lush and low-rent lawyer who refuses to let her 11-year-old client tell the Feds where a crooked politician's corpse is buried, because then the Feds would go out and arrest the murderer and the kid wouldn't have to worry about being killed by the Mafia and the movie would be over, A tedious film, based on a John Grisham novel, that ends in an airplane hangar with the main character flying off to enter the witness protection program--an odd ending for a script which has heretofore moved heaven and earth to suggest that the United States Government cannot be trusted.

Fair Game -- Cindy Crawford plays a crusading family attorney who knows more than she should know--perhaps the truth about that gerbil. Invoking federal maritime law, in a scene about as believable as Claudia Schiffer invoking the Dred Scott decision, Crawford threatens to impound a ship owned by an alimony deadbeat, little knowing that the ship is the nerve center of a global thievery ring. Marked for death by the menaced ne'er-do-wells, Cindy escapes in the company of Billy Baldwin, who plays a courageous but slow-witted cop. But the thieves stay hot on her trail, sometimes by impersonating FBI agents, other times by following a string of credit card purchases.

This is exactly the same thing that happened to Julia Roberts in The Pelican Brief. Question: Since Cindy Crawford looks like the kind of lawyer who learned everything she knows about the law by buying tickets to movies based on John Grisham novels she didn't read, and since The Pelican Brief was made in 1993, more than a full year before Fair Game, why does she keep using credit cards and falling for the old bad-guys-impersonating-FBI-agents scam? Doesn't anyone in bad movies ever go to see the other bad movie that the current bad movie is a carbon copy of, and thus find out that you can't use your credit card when fleeing bad guys, because the bad guys will impersonate FBI agents who cannot be trusted? Is anyone out there paying attention? Or is it just me? Fair Game does contain one good line, which the harried Crawford delivers to Baldwin: "Stop, those are police cars."

Thanks, Cindy.

Guilty as Sin -- Rebecca De Mornay plays a hotshot criminal lawyer who, for no very good reason, decides to defend Don Johnson, a playboy accused of brutally murdering his wife. Even though Johnson is obviously guilty, because he inherits everything once his wife is out of the way, De Mornay continues to defend him, because it gives her a chance to show how nice she looks in (and out of) tight lawyer's clothes, and because she probably thinks that if she can just delay long enough, the director will figure out a way for the movie to make sense. A film that strongly suggests that the entire American legal establishment cannot be trusted, Guilty as Sin contains one good line. When De Mornay asks her client why he didn't wear gloves when he murdered his wife, Johnson sneers, "Killing with gloves on would be like fucking with a rubber."

Somehow, this seems like the sort of thing Don Johnson would say.

In the Name of the Father -- Emma Thompson plays a hotshot, crusading lawyer who defends Daniel Day-Lewis against charges that he and some of his Irish mates blew up a pub in London. The film strongly suggests that the government cannot be trusted. Especially the government of a country that produces people like Emma Thompson.

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