...And Justice for All (1979)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Theatrical Trailer-(2:19) Audio Commentary-Norman Jewison (Director) Biographies-Cast & Crew
Rating
Year Of Production	1979
Running Time	114:14
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (65:02)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Norman Jewison
Studio Distributor	Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	Al Pacino Jack Warden John Forsythe Lee Strasberg
Case	Soft Brackley-Transp
RPI	$36.95	Music	Dave Grusin

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 mono (192Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 mono (192Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 2.0 mono (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 mono (192Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 mono (192Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 mono (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English French German Italian Spanish Dutch Arabic Bulgarian Czech Danish Finnish Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Norwegian Polish Portuguese Swedish Turkish French Audio Commentary German Audio Commentary Italian Audio Commentary Spanish Audio Commentary Dutch Audio Commentary	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Arthur Kirkland (Al Pacino) is something of a rarity: an honest lawyer committed to his clients and to his notion of what justice is. The movie opens with Kirkland in jail for contempt of court after getting a little too passionate in a confrontation with the universally hated Judge Fleming (John Forsythe). After his release, almost every injustice you can think of is perpetrated against him and his clients from the bench, other lawyers and the ethics committee, and to top it all off, when Judge Fleming is charged with rape, he blackmails Arthur into acting for him.

    Knowing something of the legal system, much of the barbs hurled by ... And Justice for All ring true: I've seen lawyers convincing their clients to settle court actions for no better reason than so as they can get to a golf game or a boozy lunch, and there is quite clearly a better brand of justice for those who can afford it. But like in The Hurricane, director Norman Jewison unfortunately slams his point of view across, rather than allow for the audience to take the facts as presented in order to make up their own minds. Co-writer Barry Levinson, who later directed Wag The Dog, is also to blame for this impression, and missing from ... And Justice for All is much of the humour present in that later hilarious political satire.

    Although Pacino was his usual brilliant self (he garnered one of his many Oscar nominations for this role), his performance would have been better suited to a drama rather than a satire: his character doesn't exactly crack too many jokes. That, as well as the subject matter, makes you expect a traditional dramatic pace and resolution, and unfortunately this just doesn't happen. That aside, there are some fantastic performances, many of which are quite amusing, such as from Jeffrey Tambor (How the Grinch Stole Christmas) as Kirkland's partner and Jack Warden (Used Cars), a nutcase of a judge. On the more dramatic side of things, but also excellent, are Lee Strasburg (The Godfather Part II) and Christine Lahti ("Chicago Hope").

    This one is worth a look if you've ever wondered why lawyers are paid so much, or what exactly goes on in the halls of our courthouses. It's just a pity that a sledgehammer is used to hit home a message that an intelligent audience could have discovered on its own.

Video

    I was impressed by the level of sharpness and detail produced by such old source material. Shadow detail was also very good. There was some grain present in a couple of scenes (namely at 3:40to 3:46, 6:20to 6:28 and at 43:00 to 44:00) but I feel that these instances were due to the low light and slower speed film of the time rather than a lack of transfer detail.

    There are two things about this movie that affect the representation of the colour palette, and both are related to the fact that this movie was made in 1979. The first is the fact that most movies of this time period are often a little subdued in the colour department. Secondly, the costumes and production design all seem to be in various shades of brown, as was the style of the times. In fact, I can't really remember any bright colours at all, but I also have no recollection of any problem with the colour that was presented. Skin tones came across as reasonably natural (if a little pale), and blacks were a little brownish and reasonably faded..

    The transfer, as is to be expected, suffers a little from film artefacts. These, though, with the exception of the first five minutes of the movie, are not overly distracting, and consist mainly of dusty type blemishes. There were no MPEG artefacts, and as far as film to video artefacts go, there were some very minor instances of aliasing at 20:00 to 22:00 on Grandpa's check shirt, at 58:36on a horizontal blind and finally at 83:41on some roof shingles.

    This disc is RSDL formatted, with the layer change occurring midway through chapter 17 at 65:02. It is perfectly placed between scenes, and is hardly distracting at all.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    A couple of times I detected some reasonably obvious hiss (at around 45:00 and later after 105:00) which sounded like it had some sort of noise reduction or compression applied. There were no other specific defects.

    There were a couple of occasions where I had a little difficulty understanding the audio, but neither were related to the transfer process. The first was at around the 32:00 mark where the actors are unpacking a meal and the rustling paper is a little loud (this was related to the way that the audio was recorded) and the second was at 62:00 where Pacino whispers some dialogue. Audio sync was not a concern.

    The Dave Grusin (The Firm) score was probably the one feature of the movie that dates it: it is jazz-oriented, and quite firmly placed the movie in the seventies. It was probably a little light for the subject matter, but the director explains that this was in order to play up the satirical element.

    Being a mono track, there was no real activity from the surrounds or subwoofer.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

Theatrical Trailer (2:19)

Director's Commentary - Norman Jewison

Talent Profiles

• Full frame version

• Nothing

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall