Find Me Guilty

Jackie DiNorscio is a defendant in a mafia trial. He dismisses his lawyer and decides to represent himself. He has no legal knowledge but he has a sense of humour, and he turns making the jury laugh into a strategy. The trial runs twenty-one months. The subject is not crime but the courtroom as a stage. DiNorscio never claims innocence; his entire defence rests on not selling out his friends, and what he offers the jury is not a legal argument but a personality. The form stays almost entirely inside the room. Sidney Lumet keeps the camera still and leaves the tension to the timing of the lines; it is his last return to the courtroom he came back to throughout his career. Much of the screenplay was taken from the actual trial transcripts, and what DiNorscio says is on the record that way. The case was one of the longest mafia trials in American history. Vin Diesel put on weight and wore a hairpiece for the role, and what an actor known for action films does here was considered the most praised performance of his career. Alex Rocco and Ron Silver are in the cast, with Peter Dinklage as one of the defence lawyers. Who it is for: viewers who like courtroom films and narratives built on real cases. Who it is not for: anyone who will refuse to sympathise with DiNorscio; the film makes him likeable and leaves his crimes in the background.