Law on Film

Matewan (written and directed by John Sayles) dramatizes the events of the Battle of Matewan, a coal miners’ strike in 1920 in a small town in the hills of West Virginia. In the film, Joe Kenehan (Chris Cooper, in his film debut), an ex-Wobbly organizer for the United Mine Workers (also known as the “Wobblies”), arrives in Matewan, to organize miners against the Stone Mountain Coal Company. Keneha...

This episode looks at two films that examine the environmental disaster in Minamata, Japan: Noriaki Tsuchimoto’s documentary, Minamata: The Victims and the World (1971), and Andre Levitas’s Minamata (2020), a Hollywood feature film that tells the story through the famous American photographer, W. Eugene Smith. From 1932 to 1968, the Chisso Corporation, a local petrochemical and plastics maker, dum...

Black Hawk Down (2001) describes the plight of the U.S. crew of a Black Hawk helicopter that is shot down during the Battle of Mogadishu during the civil war in Somalia in October 1993. The battle resulted in the death of 18 American soldiers and hundreds of Somalis; it also prompted the U.S. withdrawal from Somalia after images of dead U.S. soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu...

A Separation (2011) is an Iranian drama written and directed by Asghar Farhadi. The film depicts the martial separation between a middle-class couple, Nadar (Peyman Moaadi) and his wife Simin (Leila Hatami). Simin wants the family to leave Iran to make a better life for their 10-year-old daughter Termeh, but Nadar does not want to leave his father who is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. So Nada...

This episode explores Bridge of Spies (2015), the Cold War legal and political thriller directed by Steven Spielberg (and written by Matt Charman, Ethan Coen, and Joel Coen). The film is based on the true story of American attorney James Donovan, who is assigned to represent Soviet spy Rudolf Abel after Abel is arrested in New York and prosecuted for espionage. The story takes a turn when American...

Chinatown (1974) is a neo-noir crime thriller, directed by Roman Polanski from a screenplay by Robert Towne. Based loosely on the Owens Valley water wars in Los Angeles from the early twentieth century, the film follows private investigator J.J. (“Jake”) Gittes (Jack Nicholson) as he pursues a series of leads that take him into the dark underbelly of power and corruption in 1930s Los Angeles. A wo...

The Verdict  (1982) tells the story of down-on-his-luck Boston lawyer, Frank Galvin (Paul Newman). Galvin had been a rising star until he was framed for jury tampering by a partner at his elite Boston law firm because he planned to expose the firm's illegalities. Galvin left the firm and his marriage and career fell apart. After Galvin hits rock bottom, his former partner and friend Mickey Mo...

Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007) centers on the plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I of England, the arrest and execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (Elizabeth’s cousin), and King Phillip II of Spain’s attempt to topple Elizabeth and install a Catholic monarch on the English throne, which culminates in England’s defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. The film also portrays the complex emotional trian...

This episode explores Atom Egoyan's 1997 film, The Sweet Hereafter , which describes the impact of a tragic school bus accident that caused the death of 14 children on a small Canadian town. The film is based on Russell Banks’ 1991 novel of the same name (which in turn was based on a real-life bus crash in Texas). The film centers on personal injury lawyer Mitchell Stephens (Ian Holm), who tr...

This episode examines Absence of Malice , a 1981 drama directed by Sidney Pollack. After Miami-based newspaper reporter Megan Carter (Sally Field) is tipped off by Justice Department organized crime strike force chief Elliot Rosen (Bob Balaban) about a criminal investigation into the disappearance and likely murder of a local union official, her paper runs a sensational front-page story. But the s...

Inherit the Wind (1960) is a fictionalized account of the 1925 Scopes “Monkey Trial," where a local teacher is prosecuted for teaching about human evolution in public school in violation of state law. The film was directed by Stanley Kramer and is based on a play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee. It stars Spencer Tracy as Henry Drummond (patterned after celebrated defense attorney Clar...

The Caine Mutiny (1954) is based on Herman Wouk’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel of the same name. The film, directed by Edward Dmytryk and produced by Stanley Kramer, portrays the fictitious events on board the U.S.S. Caine, a Navy destroyer-minesweeper in the Pacific during World War II.  Lt. Stephen Maryk (Van Johnson) relieves the seemingly unstable Lt. Commander Philip Francis Queeg, Captain of...

This episode looks at “Law Films You Won't Want to Miss,” a recent list of "the most captivating legal themed movies," published in U.S. News and World Report .  Which movies are on the list? Which didn't make the cut? And what does the list tell us about “law movies”—and of great law movies?  One film on the list may be something of a surprise: Miracle on 34th Street (1947) wr...

Eight Men Out (1988) is a dramatization of professional baseball’s infamous Black Sox scandal, in which eight members of the Chicago White Sox conspired with gamblers to intentionally lose the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. The film, which was directed by John Sayles, is based on Eliot Asinof’s 1963 book, Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series. It recounts how a group of...

Anatomy of a Fall (2023) is an acclaimed French drama directed by Justine Triet, from a screenplay she co-wrote with her real-life partner, Arthur Harari. The movie centers on the criminal trial of a writer (Sandra Hüeller) who is accused of killing her husband (Samuel Maleski) in a small town in the French Alps. The film operates on multiple levels. On one level, it dissects the circumstances sur...

Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) describes the series of murders of members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma in the early 1920s. Because tribal members retained mineral rights on their reservation, they became extraordinarily wealthy after oil was discovered on tribal land. This leads a corrupt local boss, William K. Hale (Robert De Niro), to conspire with others in the community to deprive the Os...

Oppenheimer (2023) stars Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the American theoretical physicist known as the “father of the atomic bomb” for his role as director of the Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II . The film was written and directed by Christopher Nolan, based on the book, American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin. The film traces Oppenheimer’s early life, his rise to w...

Eye in the Sky (2015), directed by Gavin Hood from a script by Guy Hibbert, depicts the operation of a multinational team aimed at high-level operatives from the Al-Shabaab terrorist group in Nairobi, Kenya. When the British army learns of the location of the suspects,  it plans to capture them. But surveillance reveals the suspects are preparing two new recruits to carry out a suicide bombing. Br...

Norma Rae (1979) describes the struggle of Norma Rae Webster (Sally Field), a factory worker with limited education, to unionize a textile mill in North Carolina. The film was directed by Martin Ritt from a screenplay by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr., and is based on the true story of Crystal Lee Sutton (as told in the 1975 book Crystal Lee, A Woman of Inheritance by New York Times reporter...

A Civil Action (1998) is based on Jonathan Harr’s critically acclaimed book of the same name. Written and directed by Steve Zaillian, the film starts John Travolta, and features supporting performances by Robert Duvall (who was nominated for an Oscar), William H. Macy,  James Gandolfini, John Lithgow, Kathleen Quinlan, and Tony Shalhoub. The film tells the true the story of the court battle over e...

Law on Film is created and produced by Jonathan Hafetz. Jonathan is a professor at Seton Hall Law School. He has written many books and articles about the law. He has litigated important cases to protect civil liberties and human rights while working at the ACLU and other organizations. Jonathan is a huge film buff and has been watching, studying, and talking about movies for as long as he can rem...

This episode explores the iconic Indiana Jones trilogy, some of the most popular and well-known movies of all time. The trilogy consists of the first three movies in the series: Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981); Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984); and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). The films are based on a story by George Lucas and directed by Steven Spielberg. They feature arch...

Courted (French: L'Hermine ), a 2015 French drama directed by Christian Vincent, is centered around a criminal trial in France. The accused, Martial Beclin (Victor Pontecorvo), is charged with manslaughter, which carries a possible twenty-year prison sentence, for allegedly kicking his seven-month-old daughter to death. The trial is conducted in France’s cour d’assises, which hears more serio...

Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020) centers on the struggles faced by 17-year-old Autumn Callahan (Sidney Flanigan) to obtain an abortion after learning that she’s pregnant. Autumn travels from her small town in central Pennsylvania to New York City, where she seeks to obtain the abortion, accompanied by her cousin Skylar (Talia Ryder). Autumn and Skylar must overcome a series of obstacles and pe...

The Rack (1956), directed by Arnold Laven and written by Rod Serling (originally for television) tells the story of a decorated war hero Captain Edward W. Hall, Jr. (played by Paul Newman), who returns home after being captured and held prisoner in the Korean War. While a POW, Hall was subjected to mental torture and collaborated with his captors. Hall is court-martialed; his attorney (Lt Col. Fra...