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The title role in True Believer is played by Robert Downey, Jr., who is an eager young law school graduate looking forward to interning with famed civil rights attorney James Woods.Woods who's a throwback to the hippie days of the Sixties is now making a living defending drug dealers and other various and assorted dregs of society. He's an attorney and bills have to be paid. By the way note that his office has his living quarters in it, a practice perfected back in the day by Roy Cohn. Out of the blue comes a mother looking for an attorney for her son who killed an Aryan brother in prison. But she's also looking to re-open the case that got him there in the first place, a Chinese gang killing that he swears up and down he did not do.Woods and Downey go to work and what they uncover is a frightening case of official corruption. It's an object lesson in how law enforcement can if it wants to, manufacture evidence to convict someone if they want them bad enough. In this case it's to cover up the real murderer, but I won't say more.James Woods is just about perfect casting in the role of the aged and jaded defense attorney whose young assistant helps him recapture some of his youthful idealism. Robert Downey, Jr. aids and abets Woods every step of the way in this.But the best three performances in the film by far are Miguel Fernandes as the corrupt and maniacal police snitch, Kurtwood Smith as the District Attorney of New York County and Yuji Okumoto as the imprisoned defendant.Kurtwood Smith came to be known to millions as lovable, irascible Red Foreman in That Seventies Show. Here he's one hard-nosed District Attorney who sanctions all kinds of rule breaking for what he considers the greater good. He's far from TV's Adam Schiff or the real life Robert Morgenthau.True Believer is a nice drama about some people who take on the system and win.
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