Record producer Phil Spector (Al Pacino) hires Bruce Cutler (Jeffrey Tambor) to defend him when he's accused of murder. Cutler persuades Linda Kenney Baden (Helen Mirren) to advise him. While the prosecution's story is contradicted by facts in the case, there is convincing circumstantial evidence against Spector, not the least of which is his appearance. As Baden gradually takes over the defense, even as she is ill with pneumonia, she must find a way to introduce ballistic evidence in a dramatic enough fashion to plant doubt in the jury's mind. Calling Specter to testify may be the only way to stage the evidence. She coaches him and rehearses him: can he (and she) pull it off?
Directed by David Mamet, this work is based on a real-life incident, but it comes with a disclaimer that its just a fictional tale. If anybody doesn't know about these people beforehand, then don't expect the movie to provide much more than surface level, superficial insight into the lives of these characters. Al Pacino, Helen Mirren and the rest of the highly qualified cast do a wonderful job in their mediocre roles. The movie doesn't have an electric tension as needed by such works and is slow and one can't help feeling that Phil Spector hid the whole truth from everyone right till the end. The one area where it excels is by not portraying the lead character, Linda as some sort of a hero or a villain, but as an efficient person who just does her job. Not terrible, but it lacks a point. Most of the titular character's monologues are... well, purely boring. I know that they didn't want to make a documentary, but the audience needs something to understand the main character, real or not. The whole movie builds up to the trial and it ends right before it. It was done on purpose, but the whole charade was dreadful, along with the wigs, which might actually have been the only things that imbibed characterization into Spector.
5/10
Directed by David Mamet, this work is based on a real-life incident, but it comes with a disclaimer that its just a fictional tale. If anybody doesn't know about these people beforehand, then don't expect the movie to provide much more than surface level, superficial insight into the lives of these characters. Al Pacino, Helen Mirren and the rest of the highly qualified cast do a wonderful job in their mediocre roles. The movie doesn't have an electric tension as needed by such works and is slow and one can't help feeling that Phil Spector hid the whole truth from everyone right till the end. The one area where it excels is by not portraying the lead character, Linda as some sort of a hero or a villain, but as an efficient person who just does her job. Not terrible, but it lacks a point. Most of the titular character's monologues are... well, purely boring. I know that they didn't want to make a documentary, but the audience needs something to understand the main character, real or not. The whole movie builds up to the trial and it ends right before it. It was done on purpose, but the whole charade was dreadful, along with the wigs, which might actually have been the only things that imbibed characterization into Spector.
5/10