Primal Fear (1996)
“First thing that I ask a new client is, ‘Have you been saving up for a rainy day? Guess what? It’s raining!’ “
In looking for some “serious” 90s thrillers, I came across this court-room drama starring Richard Gere, Edward Norton, & Laura Linney. Gere plays Martin Vail, a sleazy defense attorney more concerned with his own reputation than actual justice. When a young man is arrested for the grizzly murder of a prominent figure, he jumps at the chance to defend him. For reasons never really explained by the movie, he thinks his client is actually innocent & goes down a rabbit hole trying to prove it. Though it’s a pretty straightforward courtroom drama, there are some really good visual choices. The aesthetics use the colour red in interesting ways, and the scenes in which Vail talks with his client are really well framed.
The twist of the movie (spoilers) is that Vail is wrong. Though he successfully defends his client, his faith in his own instincts are shaken. The movie asks us to trust Vail, to assume that his gut feelings are right simply because he is the protagonist. But watching this “out-of-the-box” lawyer spin conspiracies in 2021, when we have multiple bombastic lawyers acting out their Hollywood fantasies IRL, it’s tough for me as a viewer to buy into his charisma.
The film also uses “split personality” (what we call Disassociative Identity Disorder) as a plot twist — mental illness is simplified & vilified, a caricature almost. This character uses DID to trick other people, and for his performance, Edward Norton got a Golden Globe + an Oscar nom. Though movies continue to portray people with DID as scary or violent (lookin at you 2016s Split & 2019s Glass?), it bears repeating that people with personality disorders are much more likely to be the victims of violent crimes than the cause of them.
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