And Justice For All

This week, a movie you might have missed. Norman Jewison’s 1979 legal drama And Justice For All was recommended by Q90.1’s very own Jeff Scott. Jeff pointed out the film’s “all-star cast and a great story about fighting the abuse of power, that seems as relevant today as it was when it was made 40 years ago.” He also wrote that “Arthur Kirkland is one of my favorite characters played by Pacino.  I think it gets overlooked in all of the hoopla surrounding Michael Corleone and Tony Montana.”

And Justice For All was made at the tail end of the 70s film school era. It was a period that combined an interest in social justice; raw, emotional writing and performances; and a very healthy dose of paranoia about people in power. It began roughly with 1969’s Easy Rider and ended somewhere around the release of 1982’s commercial blockbuster darling ET, with the final nail in the coffin being 1986’s rah-rah-love-letter to the military, Top Gun.

And Justice For All is the story of Arthur Kirkland, a principled if overworked attorney trying his best to help his menagerie of clients in Baltimore. When the film opens, Kirkland is in a holding cell, where he ended up after punching a judge for sending his clearly innocent client back to jail simply because Arthur filed the appeal late. So from the get-go, it’s clear Pacino’s character is in keeping with the 70s ethos of defying established power, no matter how futile that fight may seem.

The heart of the story is Arthur being asked to defend the same judge he punched after the man is accused of brutally assaulting and raping a young woman. Kirkland is basically told he needs to defend the judge or else his career will come to a catastrophic end. The more he works to defend him, the more convinced Arthur becomes that the judge is guilty of those crimes and many more. All while this is going on, Arthur is also trying to defend a client of his who is transgender and is rightfully terrified of ending up in jail. And Arthur’s partner, played by Jeffrey Tambor, slowly crumbles under the constant pressure of being a lawyer in a place where the law is not necessarily the strongest force in the room.

The film is very much a product of its time with some shouty, over-the-top, method-acting-with-a-capital-M performances and a jazzy, upbeat Dave Grusin score complete with big saxophone solos that seems utterly out of place given the grittiness of the subject matter. But overall the film is still affecting and powerful forty years later. Pacino plays Kirkland as a passionate, decent man who understands the flaws of the system but still expects better of it. He plays the game until he finds it too corrupt and dark for him to continue to participate. The final scene features the famous line, “You’re out of order! The whole trial is out of order!”

We live in a time that resembles the late 1970s. There is much distrust between government and the press; the environment, gender equality, and race are deep dividing points in our country; and there’s a pessimism and paranoia similar to what drove many of the greatest films of 40 years ago.

And Justice for All doesn’t conclude with some great, deus ex machina happy ending. On the contrary, it ends ambiguously with Arthur Kirkland on the steps of the Baltimore courthouse, not sure what’s going to happen to his client or his career. But to me, the important thing is that he did something. Rather than giving into corruption or giving up, he did his best to make change with the small amount of power he had to exercise. We don’t know how his story ends, but that’s true for all of us. We don’t know how things will turn out, but like Arthur Kirkland, we should do what we can to make things better right now.