Find Me Guilty
Picture: C+
Sound: C+ Extras: C Film: B-
Sidney Lumet is one of the great American filmmakers and Find
Me Guilty returns in to familiar urban territory telling such stories like
no one else, including even Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino and even Brian
De Palma. However, instead of the more
serious Dog Day Afternoon, Q&A, Serpico, Night
Falls On Manhattan and especially Prince Of The City, Find Me
Guilty is more lightweight and intentionally comic, but in ways that
backfire in ways they should not.
Vin Diesel successfully returns to real actor mode as
Jackie Dee DiNorscio, a longtime gangster who is the lesser of many evils in
the world of organized crime. That gets
him a testify-for-reduced-sentence offer, but he instead decides to reject the
offer and be his own lawyer in what turned out to be one of the largest
criminal trials in U.S. history. The
film has the usual solid casts only someone like Lumet could attract and bring
together, including Ron Silver and Peter Dinkage, Linus Roache, Alex Rocco and
Annabella Sciorra, which helps the flow of the film tremendously. However, Lumet going a bit more comical than
usual causes just too much sympathy fore the criminals in a way that kills some
of the tension of the trial. After you
get used to Diesel having hair, you realize what a good comic performance he
gives. It is not the outright comedy of
Analyze This or Analyze That, while surprisingly missing some of
the “old school gangster” humor of the underrated Mickey Blue Eyes, but
it leans towards the latter’s better sensibilities and has enough good moment
to make it worth a look.
The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image is a bit soft,
but is also slightly stylized by Lumet and cinematographer Ron Fortunato,
A.S.C., but also has some more standard shots throughout. The Dolby Digital mix may be 5.1, but has
minor surrounds and is dialogue-based like Lumet’s films do so well. Extras include TV spots, a theatrical
trailer and a solid Lumet interview that could never be long enough.
- Nicholas Sheffo
