After giving poor reviews for some of the recent hollywood movies (Annihilation, Black Panther), this is a movie with real characters who change over time, and an interesting story with excellent plot twists.And kudos to the director. The two most pivotal scenes in this movie have no dialog, no words at all. It's all done with eyes and body language. Remarkable.

Being an admirer of both Sidney Lumet and Paul Newman and having heard many great things about 'The Verdict', expectations were high. Luckily those high expectations were met.Not quite top 3 Lumet like '12 Angry Men', 'Network' and 'Dog Day Afternoon', but it is very close ('The Wiz' being his weakest by considerable distance), while Paul Newman's role here in 'The Verdict' is one of his long and great career's crowning achievements. Being constantly shown Galvin's drunkenness and self-disgust occasionally got a little heavy-going for my tastes and one is not hugely surprised by the case's outcome.On the other hand, 'The Verdict' is a superbly made film, the dark and gritty visual works so well and complements the subject equally so. Lumet directs subtly but in a way that still feels skillful and engaging. The music is suitably atmospheric, and the script is wordy but still taut and compelling, avoiding sentiment and clichés and not dragging the film down into too much exposition while still making the characters interesting.The story does have a slow start but compels ceaselessly from the twenty five minute or so mark, succeeding as a quiet yet still edge-of-your-seat courtroom drama and even more so as a character study, with Galvin a fascinating character. There are great scenes here, especially the movingly powerful summation and the whole of Lindsay Crouse's appearance. While not the biggest fan of ambiguous endings, the ambiguity and open-interpretation of the ending didn't bother me here at all and Galvin's change was believable to me and wasn't that sudden.As hoped, Newman dominates the film and his powerful performance (like when he shuts himself in the bathroom, a master class of verbal-less acting) is one of his best and deservedly nominated for an Oscar (losing to Ben Kingsley in a strong and tough competition in that category that year). The supporting cast are more than up to his level, James Mason especially is on splendidly silky smooth yet quietly menacing form, as is a touching Lindsay Crouse, a charming Jack Warden, a blood-boilingly good Milo O'Shea and emotive Charlotte Rampling.In summary, helped primarily by the performance of Newman 'The Verdict' is one engrossing last chance at a big case. 9/10 Bethany Cox

Well, Paul Newman is good, but this film is not among his best. His character is annoying at best, for a variety of reasons, the least of which is he's a lawyer. That being said, let's get to the rest of the film. It is a strong-plotted film, with the time- earned theme of the wronged-little-guys against the big-money-big-guys in a courtroom. Who wins? Watch the movie. Medical malpractice always makes for engaging material. Not much else to say about this film. Newman is solid, but not great. Jack Warden is okay, because that's all he really can be. James Mason is good, and the court scenes are among the best in the film, especially when Mason cross- examines an Irish-accented former Boston nurse. There is a gratuitous love interest and an eventual plot twist that is totally predictable. Watch it, but if you want better Newman, watch Seinfeld or Absence of Malice.

Quite honestly, I can't understand the quibbling exhibited here by some of the other reviewers. To me, this is just about a perfect movie, achieving exactly what it sets out to do, with everything in it and about it insuring the perfection of that achievement. Some say it is too slow, but this is the kind of story that has to be told slowly, as its main subject is not so much the legal case involved, but the step-by-step reemergence of a conscience that may lead to the reclamation of a human life and career from a decade or more of sheer mediocrity-cum-failure. The screenplay and direction are all of a piece, and they never veer off into cheap emotion, theatrics, violence, hyped-up speed or whatever. Lumet's direction is perfect, but it always is, and David Mamet's screenplay is a marvel of slow and painstaking discovery, both of salient story facts and of the characters' own strengths, weaknesses, fears and even concealed self-loathing (one gets the last not only in Newman's performance, but even in the short speech James Mason's character makes when justifying his and his firm's slimy methods). Which brings us to the acting, and this is really the primary reason to see this film, maybe even over and over again (I've seen it about 7 or 8 times since it first came out in 1982, each time with even more enjoyment and appreciation). Although the characters are just disparate enough to not rise to the level of an ensemble, this is film ensemble acting at its best. There is not a performance in the film that is not a stand-out. Others have already called this Newman's greatest film performance, and it well may be, but given so many superb acting jobs over almost 50 years, it may be hard to segregate any one of them as his best. But it is quietly yet grandly superb throughout. Mason's upper class but still somewhat seedy opposing attorney is as fine a thing as he ever did on screen, yet again, he did so much that even a thing as fine as this is simply running against self-competition! Jack Warden, among the most underrated actors of his time, equals them in his own way, even if in the kind of typically gruff and rough-and-ready role that was his trademark. The enigmatic performance of Charlotte Rampling as Newman's new - and maybe first in many years - love interest, comes into its own when certain hidden plot elements emerge towards the end of the film. Milo O'Shea is hatefully magnificent as the Judge, an almost too realistic near-parody of the kind of Boston Irish semi-political hack who does mean and nasty things and probably hits the Confessional once a month to be absolved of having done them. Binns is on the fence as the head of the Archdiocese, a Cardinal who seems to want to act justly, yet is willing to accede to what he intuits are some pretty unsavory methods used by his defense team, this in order to protect the reputation of the Archdiocese. Arguably the two best performances in the film are in minor roles, with Julie Bavasso (God, what an underrated actress for decades) as an older nurse who seems frightened to death of what she has witnessed in her job, and is now unwilling to speak of it to anyone, most particularly to Newman's plaintiff's attorney, finally breaking her reserve only to call him and all other members of the legal profession "whores". (In this story, it's hard to disagree with her.) And finally there is a gorgeous near-cameo appearance by Lindsay Crouse (Mamet's wife) as the missing operating room witness, whose life and career have been substantially ruined by the combined medical establishment, hospital and Archdiocese. For all practical purposes, her five minutes or so on the witness stand practically steals the acting honors in this film, a feat that would seem manifestly impossible given what I have written to this point. I would also call your attention to Mamet's incredibly well-written circumlocutionary closing argument for the plaintiffs, even more incredibly delivered by Newman in a long one-shot camera take that starts to the right of the judge's bench and behind the jury with Newman sitting silently in the distance, takes in the entire slow and deliberate speech as he makes his way up to face the jury, stays on him throughout, and then follows him over the jury's heads as he returns to his seat, now in close-up as the scene fades out. It doesn't call attention to itself, but it is in the realm of what we might expect from Welles or Hitchcock in their very best innovative moments. A wonderful film in every conceivable way!