Magnificent Pretensions

Dr. Jack is in a heap of trouble. He awakens one sparkling Southwestern morning to discover that his wife has been bludgeoned to death in bed, and he has only the flimsiest recollection of how it happened. Without a trial, he is summarily convicted by small-town mores and yellow journalism. But there is a knight in Harvard armor waiting on the prairie. Folks round those parts don't much cotton to the young lawyer because he's named Tony Petrocelli, and he defends the town drunk and talks back to officers of the law. But maybe. Dr. Jack figures, a young sharpshooter like Tony is just what he needs.

If all that sounds like Sam Sheppard and F. Lee Bailey in Easy Rider, it is un ashamedly supposed to. A modestly budgeted film without a name star, The Lawyer has magnificent pretensions. It seeks to analyze the dilemma of freedom of the press v. a defendant's pretrial rights, probe the personality of an ambitious young trial lawyer and lay bare the smug, self-righteous rural soul (which suffers from overexposure anyway). The result is a demolition derby that threatens to wreck everyone in sight.

The wonder is that a few emerge unscathed. Director Sidney Furie (The Leather Boys, The Ipcress File) uses film gimcracks that have become pure convention: oblique camera angles, elliptical scene shifts, blinding lights to denote oppressive authority. Still, he maintains an even pace that helps tone down the film's giddy aspirations. As Petrocelli, Newcomer Barry Newman must cope with the staggering improbability of the lawyer's very presence in the town. But he approaches the role with cheerful pugnacity instead of that air of insufferable concern that overlays most screen lawyers. The master craftsman in this melange, though, is Harry Gould, who portrays the guileful, geriatric district attorney. Wearing a rumpled suit and a feral gleam, he baits witnesses with soft-voiced ruthlessness and brazenly plays on the jury's sympathies. His well-modulated performance demonstrates a principle that jurists and film makers alike should remark: solid courtroom drama ought to be that and nothing more.

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