Reversal of Fortune

1990 true crime drama

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A lawyer jeopardizes his career as he defends a snooty guy who has been found guilty of trying to kill his rich wife.

Julie Hagerty again. She seems to be haunting me. IMDb has 81 acting credits for her, and it seems I've seen 70 of them in the past month. I guess if one must be haunted, you could be haunted by worse than Julie Hagerty though.

Perhaps Julie Hagerty and the pornographic frog figurine that sits on a desk in this is all a movie really needs, but this has a lot more. One thing I really like is how the movie deals with wealth. The movie starts with this sweeping shot of wealth, all with this Mark Isham opening theme. Later, we get a lot of shots of the von Bulow residence, a big ol' fancypants house, the kind with all kinds of furniture that nobody ever uses. Dershowitz isn't exactly impoverished, but still, von Bulow looks so out of place whenever he's in the Dershowitz residence. He doesn't exactly turn up his nose, but you can sort of tell that he wants to. The characters don't discuss money much, other than an awkward discussion of how much Dershowitz needs to be paid, something that you don't even get the impression that von Bulow cares about. Still, money kind of hovers over this whole thing, and it very likely causes most of the audience for this movie, the ones who are only able to buy furniture that can be used, to have a distrust of Claus von Bulow. This is a movie that shows us that while money can't buy happiness or love, it can help you afford a good defense attorney.

I don't think I was supposed to like Claus, but I couldn't help myself. Part of that might be his sense of humor. Irons plays this character about as coldly as a character can possibly be played, but there are times when this very dry and very dark humor emerges. I like how his jokes at lunch--the one where he didn't even get his prawns--make Dershowitz's staff a little uncomfortable. And initially, I thought that Glenn Close was going to get the last words in this, something that I thought was poignantly appropriate. But when Irons gets to make one final joke and then give this spectacular wink, I was happy that he got to lead us into the closing credits instead.

Ron Silver is just as good as Irons while playing a character who is the complete opposite--the most likable lawyer you might ever meet. In his first appearance on screen, we see the character playing basketball, erratically, before getting a phone call and busting his phone on the concrete. It's a great introduction to the character, and later scenes where he discusses the von Bulow case over Chinese food with his son, assembles his legal team in a montage, convinces one member of that team that the morality/immorality of the case isn't the black and white issue she thinks it is, meets with the "least impressive witness [he's] ever seen," and has one final interaction with his client where he gets to dish out his own brand of coldness are all scenes that create this memorable character.

The movie almost plays out like it was directed by a defense attorney, someone charged with taking these completely unlikable character and creating reasonable doubt about his guilt. There's an ambiguity to the whole thing, and sometimes there's an ambiguity with individual characters. Flashbacks clash--von Bulow's and the testimonies of others--which further muddy the waters. In the end, I didn't care much at all about the guilt or innocence of Irons' character. I just appreciated the journey to get to that verdict and that final Irons' wink.