True Believer

Eddie Dodd was once a civil rights lawyer; now he makes a living getting drug dealers acquitted and tells himself it is a principled choice. Roger Baron, fresh out of law school, comes to work for him. A case lands on their desk: a Korean man who has been in prison for eight years. The subject is not innocence but a lawyer reckoning with his own past. Dodd does not want the case, and his young assistant's insistence irritates him, because the kid reminds him who he used to be. The form is a classical courtroom thriller: investigation, hunting for witnesses, trial. The detail is human rather than legal; the real findings are not in records but in people who agree to talk. James Woods' Dodd was drawn from Tony Serra, the San Francisco lawyer known for radical cases; Serra's long hair, refusal to wear a tie and attitude to choosing clients went straight into the film. Robert Downey Jr. plays the young lawyer, in the years when he was working most. Joseph Ruben directs. Who it is for: viewers who like eighties legal thrillers and Woods at speed. Who it is not for: anyone expecting complexity from the case itself; the narrative becomes predictable towards the end.