Rated: R, for situational profanity; a woman is punched at one point as a key plot point.
Best suited for: Teenagers over about 14, and all family members who love rich character drama.
Let me say straight off that if you watch “The Verdict” with your teenagers, as I highly recommend this week, there will be a few f-bombs dropping in the family room.
But let’s also admit that your teenagers have heard these f-bombs, to much lesser purpose, in raunchy R-rated comedies like “The Hangover” or “Old School.” And to watch Paul Newman deliver one of his greatest performances is to swear a different kind of oath: This is a fine movie, with the kind of earned highs and lows we haven’t seen from any Hollywood production so far this year.
The 1982 movie drew on Newman’s own aging position among the storied Hollywood elite to enrich the character of Boston hack lawyer Frank Galvin. The hard-drinking, too-honest-for-his-own-good Galvin latches onto a hopeless medical malpractice case to revive his legal career.
He’s up against Boston’s overpowering Catholic hierarchy to represent the family of a girl left in a coma by a botched surgery. He knows it, but can he prove it? And how treacherous will the wily opposing counsel, James Mason, become in defending Mother Church?
Quite wily, in fact. And the gritty cold of a Boston winter adds depth and atmosphere to the late Sidney Lumet’s masterpiece. Newman, meanwhile, is utterly convincing in both his alcoholic dissipation and his newfound sense of crusading purpose.
Other than a few well-placed profanities — this is high-stakes, mature stuff, after all — there’s nothing to deter families watching with older children. There’s an implied affair integral to the plot, tastefully handled, and less sex and violence than your average sitcom. For a meaty, rewarding film on the dangers and triumphs of “justice,” few movies top “The Verdict.”
