The Verdict: Difference between revisions

''[[The Verdict]]'' is a 1982 courtroom drama film directed by [[Sidney Lumet]] and written by [[David Mamet]], based on a novel by Barry Reed and starring [[Paul Newman]]. Frank Galvin is a washed-up alcoholic attorney who hasn't won a case in years and who spends his time lying his ways into funerals. His friend, Mickey Morrissey, gets him a medical malpractice suit about a woman rendered comatose during surgery with a guaranteed large settlement. However, a visit to the girl deeply affects him, and at the meeting with Archdiocese of Boston to hammer out the settlement, he rejects the money, deciding that this is his last chance to save himself and resolves to fight it out. This, of course, displeases everyone, from the family to the judge, and his opponent in the trial is Ed Concannon, backed by a large and professional legal team. To make matters worse, no one seems to be able to tell him what actually happened during the surgery. Also along the way he finds a lover in a woman named Laura, a complex relationship that isn't made any easier by the trial.