Word: jewison
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...interview last week in his Ritz-Carlton hotel room, Norman Jewison, director of And Justice For All, discussed why he made the movie--"I've always felt there were two laws in this country. One for the rich and one for the poor. I've always been suspicious of lawyers, but I've only seen the films about kindly lawyers...
Remember Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird? Atticus risked his life to try to save Tom Robinson, which ultimately, he failed to do. Jewison loved that movie, so he made a sequel...
Gregory Peck's Atticus is an especially hard act to follow, but Jewison found a superb successor in the person of Al Pacino. Pacino, who plays Arthur Kirkland, the film's do-good hero, first made the big time as Michael in The Godfather. He made it again as the run down hero of Serpico thee years ago, but there's been a drought since. Now comes Arthur Kirkland, who works perfectly for Pacino because he's a blend of Michael Corleone and Serpico. Like Corleone, Kirkland wants to do everything himself; like Serpico, he's a man fighting society...
...film begins with a simple bit of prose, beaten into the ground in grade school and forgotten after age 15--the pledge of allegiance. "The pledge of allegiance is a very big thing," Canadian-born Jewison said last week. To make this point, he recruited Lazlo Kovak--a cameraman whose strong sense of style attracted most of the critical acclaim for Woody Allen's Interiors. The voices of children in the background rise as Kovak zeroes in on a blackboard and an American flag--"and to the republic for which it stands one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty...
Another serious touch is the tenderness of Kirkland's grandfather, Sam, the guiding force in the young lawyer's life. At one point, Kirkland tells his grandfather's friend, "You know if he (Sam) goes. I don't know what I'd do." But Jewison chooses an odd route of saving us from this terrifying conclusion--he never mentions Sam again...