Dotsthavesp I wanted to but couldn't!

ChanBot i must have seen a different film!!

SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

betty dalton The Verdict: I sigh in awe...The Verdict deserves to be treated as something very special. Dont watch it as a popcorn movie just to be entertained. Save this subtle movie for a rainy day, when you are in a melancholic mood, because The Verdict will definitely lift your spirits up, but in an unexpected twisted way, like in real life with all its contradicting emotions.There is no big drama right in your face. This story sneaks up on you, in a subtle clever way. The Verdict is a story about a drunk who has hit rockbottom. That may sound depressing, but on the contrary, everything about this movie oozes refinement: the story, the photography, the acting, the soundtrack, all are magnificent. The Verdict levetates way beyond just a good quality movie. Sidney Lumet treats us viewers with something only a great director can do: he talks to us when nothing is being said. He uses silence in scenes as an emotion.The magnificent photography and the subtle but excellent acting in The Verdict are beyond any other courtdrama, and even beyond any other regular movie.. The photography and the acting are meticulous yet so natural, slow in tempo yet so serene and vivid simultaneously. Watching The Verdict often feels like seeing paintings come alive... Many scenes in The Verdict reach their climax without words being spoken. There are moments of silence everywhere. Even the very end of the movie fades out without one word being said but at the same time that silence is covering emotions so heartwrenging and glorious that I sigh in awe...

Dan1863Sickles My mother was a tough, Jewish broad who never took crap off anyone. She was born in NYC in the Depression, worked her way through college, and later became the chairman of the foreign language department at a small women's college in upstate New York. The lady had only one weakness:Paul NewmanBeing dragged to Paul Newman movies wasn't so bad when I was a kid, when it was stuff like BUTCH CASSSIDY & THE SUNDANCE KID or THE STING. But by the time I was in college, Newman's movies had really started to slide, and sag, and smell like dead fish wrapped up in old socks. This movie was so melodramatic, so dishonest, so sentimental about all the ugliest, dumbest aspects of the male mystique in America. Newman plays a drunken Irish lawyer who's down and out. Note well that David Mamet really plays up the drunkenness as if it's some noble affliction, proof of a pure heart, not a disease that ruins peoples lives. Well, Newman does his best to make this loser into a tragic hero. Even with a bad script, Paul Newman finds some pain that's real and connects to it on screen. So then, the drunk with the heart of gold gets the chance to make a comeback in the courtroom. He's got a can't lose case, about some mother who's brain-dead, or brain- damaged, because of corrupt and uncaring Catholic doctors at a hospital run by priests and bishops. Only the nurses are pure and true! There are so many warped assumptions in this film, about motherhood, and womanhood, and the tendency to both put women on pedestals and treat them like three year old toddlers. The whole thing is very Catholic, very male, very sick, very David Mamet. Oh, and the drunken hero Frank has a lady assistant (Charlotte Rampling, much too classy and sexy for this drunken boor) and of course she's no good and needs to get punched in the face. Women are okay when they're making babies, you see, but when a woman tries to compete in a man's world she needs to get smacked in the face and sent right back to the kitchen!David Mamet wrote this stinker, and he's a real horse's ass from Chicago. Just like Studs Lonigan, but without the class.

HotToastyRag The Verdict is what The Color of Money should have been. In The Color of Money, Paul Newman plays an old hustler who used to be young and famous. He trains and teaches a young upstart, but it was hardly an interesting storyline. Wouldn't it have been a more captivating plot if he used to be young and famous, and now, he's washed up, playing the small time again and struggling with an alcohol problem? I think so.In The Verdict, Paul Newman plays a lawyer who once had a future in a prestigious law firm. Now, he's a washed up alcoholic, chasing ambulances for clients. He's given one last chance to bring a big case to court, but can he get and keep his act together and win? With a running time of over two hours, it feels a little slow. But courtroom dramas can be notoriously slow, especially in the 80s, so it's not the end of the world. It's also a little predictable, but if you like Paul Newman or stories about underdogs, definitely give it a chance.

janinequinlan When The Verdict, a courtroom drama directed by Sidney Lumet, came out in 1982, I had just graduated nursing school. The Verdict features Paul Newman and was written by David Mamet. This film has a medical context and a nursing role.A word about Sidney Lumet. Lumet directs quality movies about medico-legal, substance abuse and cultural issues. For instance, in Equus the plot is about a psychiatrist treating a boy who blinds a stable full of horses. Lumet also directed Long Day's Journey into the Night which is Eugene O'Neill's autobiographical account of his explosive home life, fueled by a substance abusing mother, an alcoholic father and a mentally ill brother. Dog Day Afternoon is about a gay man who robs a bank to pay for his lover's sex change operation. The simple robbery turns in to a hostage situation and a media circus. Critical Care, a medical "comedy", is about a young hospital resident embroiled in a legal battle with siblings over the care of their rich, comatose father. The resident has a supervisor who insists that he only care for patients with full insurance. Finally, 12 Angry Men, another courtroom drama is about a young Hispanic male who is accused of murdering his father but the story really is about jurors' prejudices about the trial, their biases about the accused and each other.The Verdict depicts a once successful, now down-and-out lawyer who sees his career turning around when he accepts a medical malpractice case and refuses to settle rather than going to trial.Kaitlin Costello Price, Mamet's wife in real life by Lindsay Crouse, is a nurse who was involved in the pre-surgical care of the comatose patient. The long and short of her story is that she had to leave nursing because the surgeons told her to change a patient's record who had eaten an hour before the operation so they could use general anesthesia. If she did not falsify the record, she would never work as a nurse again. She doesn't.Her words echo in my mind to this day "Who were these men? Who were these men? I wanted to be a nurse"!Some racial profiling and sexual bias goes on here. A black doctor is brought in to testify and Newman treats him shabbily.Jack Warden called him a "witch doctor". Additionally, there was a seen where Newman punched his girlfriend for lying to him and she thinks she deserves it.