Closer Than Most People

Sometimes it’s hard to keep from thinking about all the films we’re not getting these days. The ones that were never meant to launch franchises or win awards. They were just movies. The programmers, the thrillers, the occasional workmanlike jobs from esteemed directors made for reasons that can’t be understood at first. Going to the movies isn’t as much fun without them and it’s still hard not to hope they’ll come back the way they should. Let’s call them the B-sides, the films that were never meant to be the big ones but gave us so much pleasure anyway. The great Sidney Lumet, to name one, made more than a few of these but it was hard for him not to since he made so many movies anyway. Of course, there was NETWORK, DOG DAY AFTERNOON, THE VERDICT and others but there were more than a few that didn’t reach such heights. You could argue that some of them were never meant to but the director’s approach towards pure, humanistic naturalism made the results more interesting than they might have been whether it totally worked for the material or not. His 1974 version of MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS never feels like it was meant to be anything other than an enjoyable lark—a lavish and expensive all-star lark, granted—yet it still received six Oscar nominations. Maybe finding just the right approach to that B-side was why. This is also where you get something like DEATHTRAP (the first Sidney Lumet film I saw in a theater) which is fun and has its three leads digging into the material with relish even if it doesn’t reach quite the same heights. THE MORNING AFTER is a thriller that doesn’t quite come together yet it still got Jane Fonda a Best Actress nomination. Later in his career there were less-acclaimed titles like A STRANGER AMONG US featuring Melanie Griffith as a cop who goes undercover among Hasidic Jews to solve a murder, the 1999 Sharon Stone remake of GLORIA and even the courtroom comedy-drama FIND ME GUILTY with Vin Diesel. These are films of varying quality, yes, and a few aren’t at all uninteresting (this is a classy way to say I “liked” a film that not many other people do) but in the end there isn’t much point in overselling them.

To name another one of these films, I’m not sure why a director as great as Sidney Lumet made the 1993 courtroom thriller GUILTY AS SIN. Maybe he liked the script, which was written by Larry Cohen of all people. Maybe he liked the idea of trying his hand at a slick commercial potboiler, skirting around the edges of the erotic thriller. Maybe he liked the paycheck. Maybe he just felt like making something, anything, and there’s not much point in sitting around the house waiting for another NETWORK to drop into your lap. The man was in his late sixties at this point so why not have a little fun although I can’t help but imagine Rebecca De Mornay, hot off THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE, being thrilled when asked if she wants to star in a Sidney Lumet film only to read the script and think, really? This one? All right, I guess, I imagine might have been her response and the actress certainly rises to the occasion. GUILTY AS SIN was made by the Disney arm Hollywood Pictures, back in the day when the studio was pumping them out nonstop, so this was one of a whopping 11 films released by that outfit back in ’93 alone (studios opening movies in theaters, what a concept). There’s not much to be gained by spending a lot of time defending GUILTY AS SIN but it is fun in a entertainingly junky way and maybe I just miss when films like this were a normal thing. And maybe this one is even a little less normal than some of those others, which makes it even better.

Chicago defense attorney Jennifer Haines (Rebecca De Mornay) has just secured another victory when she gets a racketeering case against a notorious mobster dismissed in a shrewdly uncovered technicality. But soon after she encounters charismatic playboy David Greenhill (Don Johnson) who is recently accused of murdering his wealthy wife and anxious to have Jennifer defend him. Though reluctant, she finds herself believing his pleas of innocence and takes on the case but before she even realizes it his behavior becomes extremely erratic, leading her to try to drop the case. But her efforts to do this fail and soon she has no choice but to go ahead with the trial no matter her feelings about him. Helped by longtime friend and private investigator Moe (Jack Warden), she gradually becomes even more uncertain of his innocence and soon Jennifer begins to take action to rig the trial in a way that she would never have considered attempting before.

It's an absurd plot played straight but I still wonder if Sidney Lumet was grinning all the way through, perfectly happy to let the plot points click into place and watch his lead actors spar with each other. By a certain point, watching the two of them face off in scenes together, each actor in profile, becomes the one thing the film is interested in more than anything else. The film plays as if Larry Cohen decided to write a JAGGED EDGE rip-off only whenever he felt the story would normally zig he would instead make it zag, if only to see how long he could keep these balls he was juggling in the air. This makes the movie fun, if not always totally coherent, while I sometimes wonder just what the sexual politics of the film are really supposed to be along with a few plot points that are never entirely clarified. With Rebecca De Mornay stripping down to her underwear just a few minutes in, it enjoyably skirts the edge of the erotic thriller without actually turning into one—someone get Karina Longworth on the phone for her thoughts on this—and pretty much the most nudity we get is Stephen Lang, playing De Mornay’s boyfriend, lying naked with her eating Chinese food which may or may not be a reason for some people to see this movie, but after this occurs everyone keeps their clothes on. This is all she wants, to glide through life getting people off and eating Chinese food naked in her office to celebrate, never giving any of it another thought until suddenly she’s confronted with the truth of what her life has really been.

The modernistic feel to all the offices and courtrooms seen throughout give an appropriately cold feel to the film that goes well with the icy nature of the characters and Lumet almost seems as interested in exploring them in relation to these surroundings as much as the plot. This is even helped by how the film is apparently set in Chicago, as opposed to Sidney Lumet’s usual New York stomping grounds, but never does much at all to sell this, instead being entirely filmed in Toronto. Even this gives the film an odd vibe and between that overall coolness, music by Howard Shore along with some additional perversity skating around the edges it doesn’t feel that far removed from what a ‘normal’ courtroom thriller directed, if not written, by David Cronenberg might be like. When one character first appears I even found myself thinking how the actress seemed like she could have played one of the patients in DEAD RINGERS only to look her up and discover she did exactly that. Maybe it’s not a part of any real world, let alone the actual Chicago or Toronto, but it does give Lumet the chance to explore a different mood than it would have if he’d been filming in New York once again.

Even if Larry Cohen put more thought into keeping things unpredictable than exploring any genuine psychological reality to these characters, the story of a woman being harassed by a man who won’t leave her alone plays a little more interesting now all these years after it was made whether the film is actually interested in focusing on that aspect or not, everyone charmed by the man, everyone skeptical of the woman being harassed by him. The film could certainly have done more with this notion and might even have been improved if it had restricted itself solely to De Mornay’s point of view up until the point when an unexpected and crucial flashback gets introduced. It feels a little flabby in that sense with a 107-minute running time that isn’t too overlong but still plays like it could have been tightened up, a few scattered scenes possibly unnecessary and maybe even redundant. It isn’t the most disciplined structure as thrillers go and the suspense isn’t always particularly showy but that’s the sort of thing we go to Brian De Palma for instead of Sidney Lumet although the De Palma version might have straightened out a few of the dangling plot threads. In his three-star review Roger Ebert takes time to wonder why one character introduced late in the film would behave in such an illogical way which is maybe taking it all too seriously and I’m not sure the film warrants such close examination. Or maybe the film is simply illustrating just how far all these women would really go for the man in question to the horror of the one woman who suspects the truth and it doesn’t want to be anything more than that.

It’s a film about two people determined to win in this battle of wills, however they win, each for their own reasons and both are looking out for their own interests, just one seems much more dangerous than the other and he’s the one getting pleasure out of it. Johnson is clearly having fun with it too, sitting at a bar at one point with drink in one hand and cigarette in another during one of his best moments he flatly states “Women take care of me,” spoken like a man who has achieved everything he has ever wanted and is now bored with it with makes the one trying to pick him up even more interested. The other men in the film surrounding De Mornay are no match for this kind of charisma, all of them looking like a walking, talking mustache in comparison, most notably the giant one Stephen Lang features going along with his perm but there are several other men have them as well. Only one man in this film has any real style and he clearly looks at all the others with total contempt. So much of the film is interested in behavior and what that means for the desire to win no matter what the cost but there’s also the strangely believable human moments throughout often involving eating whether the Chinese food early on or the random pleasure found in getting to have a spaghetti dinner cooked by Jack Warden but also in one of the very best scenes the sight of Johnson angrily making himself a particularly large and sloppy sandwich with an almost obscene amount of mayonnaise slathered on it by a considerably large knife that he starts waving around to furiously make his point to De Mornay (it still looks like it could be a good sandwich, just with way too much mayo), no fear of going fully over the top while still clearly trying to keep the behavior in check.

Pairing up Sidney Lumet and Larry Cohen feels like bringing class and trash together (and, where Larry Cohen is concerned, I definitely don’t mean trash in a bad way) so you would almost expect there to be more to say about a collaboration between the director and writer here, two men raised in New York City only twelve years apart in age and whose most famous films make so much iconic use of the streets and maybe there might be more to say about it if the film had actually been set in New York. The film isn’t as crazy as it might have been, but the dialogue helps and Johnson gets some of the best, the sort that was likely fun to write and he clearly has fun getting to say it. “Killing with gloves on would be like fucking with a rubber,” as one key confession is made might be the most memorable line of the entire film and Larry Cohen likely meant it to be.

Sidney Lumet directed THE VERDICT eleven years earlier and watching some of it with this film on the brain didn’t do GUILTY AS SIN any favors but did provide an interesting point of comparison in terms of the visual approach, how much everything in that film feels set in the old world while everything here is set in the new. You could even say it’s a film meant to explore what the modern world is becoming compared to what Sidney Lumet always knew and the very notion of rotten people getting away with things feels even more believable now all these decades after it was made. “Sometimes you gotta get rid of the old to make way for the new,” is one line of dialogue, another reason all the sleek and modern are a part of this except for Jack Warden’s office which even looks like something out of the earlier film, the dusty, messy world the director was probably most comfortable in. This sense of coldness also comes from the cinematography by Andrzej Bartkowiak who had already worked for Lumet several times at this point, THE VERDICT included, then went on to be DP on films such as SPEED and JADE before turning action director with EXIT WOUNDS and CRADLE 2 THE GRAVE among others. This sort of thing might not be what the director is best at but the suspense really does work in a few surprisingly offhand moments and even if the pulpiness keeps it from being a real character study the director can’t help but sometimes make certain moments stand out, the way De Mornay catching a glimpse of her reflection at one crucial moment feels like the director can’t help but be more interested in what the actor is doing than the suspense of whether she’s actually going to get caught.

The courtroom stuff when the trial begins in the second half is serviceable but offers very little that hasn’t been seen before so when one scene late in the film is done entirely in close-ups you can feel Lumet fighting against the standard way of shooting this whenever he gets the chance, looking for at least one more way to keep this interesting. It still all feels a little too obligatory, simply getting the plot beats and exposition out there but when allows him to take the stand without really doing it, the film once again finds the real focus of the two leads instead of all the evidence that has to be brought up, cutting things down to the private matchup between the two of them before the final plot gears click into place. It becomes the real emotional climax of the whole thing and means that the film doesn’t have to waste time getting to the enjoyably ludicrous final confrontation after that, a true visualization that sometimes you have no choice but to take them down with you to win. Nothing else needs to be said after this and it doesn’t even bother delaying the pleasure of the moment when the end credits begin to roll. It’s not necessary, since the film knows what it was, knows what it did and doesn’t need to stick around. As a random thought, Sidney Lumet’s essential book “Making Movies” which details the nuts and bolts of the entire process from his point of view came out in early 1995 which makes me wonder how much the making of GUILTY AS SIN might have informed what he had to say about the process. At one point in it he writes, “I’ve done two movies because I needed the money. I’ve done three because I love to work and couldn’t wait anymore,” but doesn’t specify if this film might have been one of those. A movie, after all, is unavoidably the product of the people who made it. Sometimes it reveals the despair one feels towards the world, unsure if there really is any chance at redemption and making the world a better place. Sometimes the film is made by somebody out for a nasty good time and there isn’t anything wrong with that.

There’s a rush that comes from watching the two leads even in a film like this, one of them repulsed, one of them enjoying so much of what he puts her through. Rebecca De Mornay grounds the movie, embracing what it is and goes for the intensity whenever she is unable to comprehend the monster she’s agreed to defend. Without the focus that comes from as she feels too horrified to take her eyes off him, the film wouldn’t work. She makes the film even better, almost as if it were a real Sidney Lumet film. Don Johnson skates through on every bit of nastiness, fully committed to enjoying himself in a way that shows he knows when to cut loose and when the real tension comes from not moving a muscle so even if we think we know what he’s thinking the answer is probably worse. Jack Warden, whose association with Lumet along with THE VERDICT goes all the way back to the ‘50s and 12 ANGRY MEN, grounds things just by showing up so even if it’s clear what sort of function he’s going to have from the start completely delivers what the part is meant to be as maybe the one truly likable person in the film. There’s not much for some of the other actors to do beyond being annoyed/perplexed by Johnson’s behavior and this is especially true for Stephen Lang playing the boyfriend, not getting to do much beyond vacillating between supportive and hostile. Dana Ivey gets in some glares as the judge, Luis Guzman is one of the cops investigating the case (a fairly brief and colorless role as Luis Guzman appearances go; this was his third film for Lumet), along with what I guess you could say is reliable Canadian talent in the smaller roles—De Mornay’s assistant is played by Norma Dell’Agnese who was one of the CIT’s in MEATBALLS and the very familiar Harvey Atkin, also from that film, appears as a judge so I’m just happy I got to reference MEATBALLS in a piece on a Sidney Lumet film. John Kapelos, familiar from THE BREAKFAST CLUB and many other things, appears early on as the mobster being defended by De Mornay but seems to be dubbed with a voice nothing like his own which, whatever else you want to say, gives the movie an odd tone from the start. Considering the movie, maybe this is a little appropriate.

Some months back I attended an American Cinematheque screening of the restoration of Francis Ford Coppola’s ONE FROM THE HEART which is another subject entirely but during the post-film discussion I was surprised to learn that Rebeca De Mornay, who had been around the Zoetrope lot during that shoot and even plays a bit part in the film had been sitting a few rows behind me the whole time. I couldn’t help but wonder, would it be totally crazy to walk up to Rebecca De Mornay and ask her what it was like working with Sidney Lumet on this film? Would she have thought such a question was completely insane? Should I have just asked her about Coppola or any other random film to sound more normal? Maybe. Regardless, I left her alone. But my point is this is a film that has stuck around in my brain, on the surface just another early ‘90s thriller but a little more off-kilter than that. GUILTY AS SIN opened in June ’93 one week before the release of JURASSIC PARK, something that may or may not mean anything at all but clearly this was made in a different world. Getting rid of the old to make way for the new, I suppose. Sidney Lumet’s next film NIGHT FALLS ON MANHATTAN came several years later (I saw that one opening night at the Chinese, because of course I did) and is set back in New York so it feels more like a Sidney Lumet film, maybe several notches below his best work while being too ambitious to be thought of as one of the B-sides but it’s still not bad. Maybe I should write about a few more of these Lumet B-sides, they give me enough pleasure after all, as flawed as several of them might be. GUILTY AS SIN is not one of Sidney Lumet’s best films. And he made a lot of films that would be considered one of his best. But the junky charm and energy mixed with the undeniable intensity coming from the leads of GUILTY AS SIN is still there and sometimes that’s exactly what you want at the movies. Or at least we once did.