And Justice For All (1979)

ReelViews 9 of 10
In the past twenty-five years, there have been countless courtroom dramas, most of which have tended towards the sensationalistic side of mediocre. ...And Justice for All is not one of those movies. Although some of the action takes place in court, including one of the best-known trial sequences in the history of film (Pacino screaming, "You're out of order! This whole trial is out of order!"), the movie is more about morality and ethics than courtroom shenanigans......And Justice for All ends with the kind of bravura outburst by Pacino that one might easily assume is designed to entice cheers and applause from the audience. But there's a subtle difference between this finale and the cornball conclusion of a later Pacino picture, Scent of a Woman, which also featured a dynamic speech. Here, the actor's words radiate real outrage, and what he says caps the film's central ethical dilemma about a lawyer defending a man he knows to be guilty. This is a powerful, cathartic moment that's neither exhilarating nor uplifting. Like most of what precedes it, the climax of ...And Justice for All underscores Jewison's message about how hollow and diseased the process of law has become. We need look no further than last year's #1 television event, the O.J. Simpson trial, to understand everything that this film is trying to say. - James Berardinelli
 
Chicago Sun-Times 8 of 10
Here's an angry comedy crossed with an expose and held together by one of those high-voltage Al Pacino performances that's so sure of itself we hesitate to demur. Pacino plays an aggressive young Baltimore lawyer who has worked within the system for 12 years or so -- he's not a reformer fresh out of law school -- but who, during the course of this movie, is driven to advise the American system of jurisprudence to stick its head where the sun don't shine...We somewhat suspiciously accept the movie's swings of tone because Pacino remains consistent, and because he seems to remember what the basic issues are even when the movie detours into irrelevant episodes like the helicopter flight...Whether it works a little cynically is left for the audience to decide: "...and Justice for All" has been so many things and struck so many tones by the ending that it's not a statement, it's an anthology. Maybe, when Pacino's courtroom scene gathers force, we just forget the farce and soap opera and romantic comedy that went before, and take the scene as self-contained. - Roger Ebert