Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Bureaucrats, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Moderators, Rollbackers, Administrators
214,537
edits
Looney Toons (talk | contribs) (defaultsort, tropelist, added bullets to tropes) |
No edit summary |
||
Line 1:
{{work}}
A 1998 film starring [[Cuba Gooding Jr.]], [[Tom Berenger]], [[Eric Stoltz]], [[
Lawson is disbarred, and while his friend Elizabeth Pope (Jean-Baptiste) praises his action on moral grounds, he goes off to Florida, working as a fishing guide. There he meets an old Englishman named Christopher Marlowe who retired there and greatly dislikes lawyers. He shows Lawson a manuscript of his called [[Title Drop|A Murder of Crows]] (from a group of crows being called a murder), about a [[Serial Killer]] who targets what he sees as morally corrupt defense lawyers. Lawson, who has been struggling to write a nover himself without success, thinks its brilliant. When Marlowe suddenly dies from a heart attack, he succumbs to temptation and passes off the work as his own. It quickly becomes an overnight success, climbing onto the bestsellers list despite criticism from the legal profession. One book signed by Lawson is sent out to a New Orleans detective, Cliffard Dubose (Berenger) who quickly recognizes a shocking fact-the murders in the book actually happened.
Line 8:
{{tropelist}}
* [[Amoral Attorney]]: The focus of the killings and movie's central Aesop.
* [[An Aesop]]: Defense attorneys are bad, especially if they get obviously guilty men off (although they are duty bound to give their client the best possible legal representation). Also, do ''not'' plagiarize-it can get you set up as a murderer.
* [[Clear My Name]]: Lawson embarks on a quest to do this, while simultaneously fleeing the police.
* [[Complete Monster]]: Arguably Thurman Parks III, Lawson's client.
* [[Frame-Up]]: Lawson experiences one. [[spoiler: The book was used to test Lawson, since his attempting to withdraw from the case made the killer reevaluate him. So he disguised himself as an old Englishman named Christopher Marlowe, who shows him the book and then apparently dies, allowing Lawson to pass it off as his own. Christopher Marlowe, as Lawson finds out, was a famous English writer well known for his adapting the Medieval legend of Faust into a play, in which the main character makes a pact with the Devil (which the killer dressed as in the beginning when he went to kill Lawson). In another disguise, he called himself Goethe, after the German philosopher and writer who also adapted Faust. When Lawson passed the book off as his own, it made him seem to be the killer himself, and have the motive too, as a disbarred lawyer disgusted with the legal profession. The photos planted in his house clinch the frame up]].
* [[Fridge Logic]]: Couldn't Lawson have proven his innocence by alibing himself on at least some of the crimes and telling them he plagiarized the book? He can't have been unaccounted for when they ''all'' took place, could he?
* [[In Medias Res]]: How the film opens.
* [[Master of Disguise]]: The [[Serial Killer]] turns out to be one of these. [[Justified Trope|Justified as he is a theater teacher, and obviously a talented actor too]].
* [[Meaningful Name]]: Lawson, a defense attorney (before he was disbarred) and son of a judge.
* [[Off on a Technicality]]: {{spoiler|The man who killed Corvus' family was let go due to one of these , triggering his [[Start of Darkness]]}}.
* [[Serial Killer]]: {{spoiler|Professor Arthur Corvus, whose killings Lawson is suspected of committing due to a [[Frame-Up]]}}.
* [[Start of Darkness]]: {{spoiler|Corvus' occurs when the hit and run driver who killed his family got [[Off on a Technicality]]. He saw that the man was remorseful, but his lawyer simply delighted in winning (and his pay of course). So he became Corvus first victim, and other [[Amoral Attorneys]] followed}}.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Film]]
[[Category:Films of the 1990s]]
▲[[Category:A Murder of Crows]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Murder of Crows, A}}
|