LEGAL ETHICS

MOVIE REVIEWS

1. BAR BOYS
Bar Boys just made me realize that the movie was not just a portrayal of law school
itself but it was the experience of what a law student was going through his journey
inside and outside his life in law school. As a first-year law student, there are many
valuable lessons that I got from watching this movie and related it from what I’ve passed
through.

After I watched the movie, I messaged my law friends if they had already watched it or
not. Since all of them were also done with it, we have shared our individual views of the
movie and we’ve come to an agreement that the “Bar Boys” depicted how tedious and
taxing law school really is. We even saw ourselves in some of the characters and
pointed out who is a certain actor on each of us since we are also composed of four
which is the same from the movie. We laughed at every law school experience from the
movie had and reminiscence the similarities we’ve also had like the “sabaw moments”,
“bokya recitations”, the anxieties we felt over the thought of failing in a subject, and
others. We felt for their struggles. We cried for their sorrows. We smiled for their
success. This happened because the empathy I have with the protagonists is on
another level since we are almost in the same boat in passing the Bar Exam.

All the while, I thought of the movie as a simple narrative with one known conclusion—
the hardships, trials, and tribulations they’ve experienced for four years under law
school will eventually be surpassed and eventually they become successful in life and
be a member of the Bar. But as I think deeply while writing this review, I realized that
the Bar Boys was meant to be something more.

One will realize that law school is a journey that is not meant to be traversed alone. In
which, you'll need your family, friends, colleagues from the office, classmates, and
especially if you have this one called love life. There were many times that the actors
lost their will in fighting for their dreams to become a lawyer but what made them to
pursue even more were the people who surrounded and motivated them to never give
up.
And while I thought of myself as one of the characters in the said movie, I was wrong.
Torran, Chris, Erik, and Josh cannot be singled out. They have characteristics of a law
student that were just broken down for specification.

Torran is the angst in all of us--that which keeps us afloat in times of distress. It is our
confidence that makes us think that we can do anything. It is our positive mindset who
embodies the will of fire in us to keep on fighting the varied challenges that we are
facing while pursuing our law studies.

Chris, on the other hand, is a well balanced, rational thinker and goal-oriented from the
group. It is the reason why we keep on going because we know that there are unlimited
opportunities ahead of this journey. It is our drive to prove that we are the best in what
we do, no matter how we do it. It is the reason why we pursue our dreams--not only for
ourselves but for our loved ones as well. Though there are many sacrifices to be done,
it is worth it to the end because it is good for ourselves.

Erik, safe to say, is the most relatable character of all of them. It is the culmination of
almost everything that happens in law school. The hardships of being underprivileged,
the struggle of being an average student and the sacrifices of our loved ones. Its
journey is like the rolling coaster where many ups and downs and high and low in times.
Even though with all the difficult moments that went pass through our life the reason
that makes us try harder is because of those people supporting us.

Lastly, Josh represents our life outside of law. No matter how we become desensitized
of our feelings beyond our readings. We still look forward to the other things that we
love to do. It is our way to keep our sanity in check from the world of legal jargons. It is
our life beyond the world we have chosen and pursued as a dream.

The road to one's success in the Bar was never meant to be a straight path. It is a rocky
road where it has its curves and its humps. Further, it has broken roads along the way
where we stop and think how far we went through and examine if our decisions were
correct or wrong in the very first place. More importantly, there is no path that is similar
to that of another, it means that our own path is unique from the rest and only us can
decide to keep further or back down from the path we’ve chosen. However, to achieve
what we really dreamt of, all we could do is to try our best in traversing our own path by
determination and resoluteness with the help of those who believe in us.
While watching Bar Boys, it hits me a little harder at this point while attending law
school. It reminded me from time to time on who we are, what we do, and who might be
with us till the end. The movie replenished my motivation to pursue harder in my law
studies and made me realized that a support system from God, family, friends,
classmates, and love life do really have a big impact on our dreams and goals in our
lives. No man is an island, so always seek help from others.

But at the end of the day, Bar Boys will be remembered not just as a movie. It will be the
narrative that echoes what law school really is, and how law students handle the same.

2. AMISTAD
Amistad, the new film by Steven Spielberg, is a masterpiece of film making providing a
thoroughly rewarding entertainment and learning experience.

The film is a fictional portrayal of events surrounding the successful revolt in 1839 by a
group of Africans headed for slavery in the Americas.

One stormy night during the summer of 1839, the 53 men imprisoned on the Spanish
slave ship La Amistad escape. Led by the lion-hearted Cinque (Djimon Hounsou), they
take control of the vessel, killing most of the crew. Adrift somewhere off the coast of
Cuba and uncertain how to make their way back to Africa, they rely on the two surviving
Spaniards to navigate the eastward journey. They are tricked, however, and the La
Amistad, which makes its way northward off the United States' eastern coastline, is
eventually captured by an American naval ship near Connecticut. The kidnapped
Africans are shackled and thrown into prison, charged with murder and piracy.

The first men to come to the Africans' defense are abolitionists Theodore Joadson
(Morgan Freeman) and Lewis Tappan (Stellan Skarsgard). They are soon joined by
Roger Baldwin (Matthew McConaughey), a property attorney of little repute. Aided by
advice from former President John Quincy Adams (Anthony Hopkins), Baldwin proves a
more persuasive orator than anyone gave him credit for, and his central argument --
that the prisoners were illegally kidnapped free men, not property -- convinces the
judge. But powerful forces have aligned against Baldwin's cause. Current President
Martin Van Buren (Nigel Hawthorne), eager to please Southern voters and 11-year old
Queen Isabella of Spain (Anna Paquin), begins pulling strings behind-the-scenes to
ensure that none of the Africans goes free.
The moments of greatest emotion in “Amistad” stand outside the main story. They
include a horrifying scene where, with food running low on the ship, the weaker captives
are chained together and thrown over the side to drown so that more food will be left for
the rest. And another sequence in which the mechanics of the slave trade are
examined, as Africans capture members of enemy tribes and sell them to slave traders.
A scene where Cinque sees African violets in John Quincy Adams' greenhouse and is
seized with homesickness. And Cinque's memory of his wife left in Africa.

What is most valuable about “Amistad” is the way it provides faces and names for its
African characters, whom the movies so often make into faceless victims. The captive
called Cinque emerges as a powerful individual, a once-free farmer who has lost his
wife and family. We see his wife, and his village, and something of his life; we
understand how cruelly he was ripped from his life and ambitions. (Since it was the
policy of slavery to destroy African families, these scenes are especially poignant.) He
speaks no English, but learns a little while in prison, and a translator is found who helps
him express his dismay at a legal system that may free him but will not affirm the true
nature of the crime against him. He learns enough of Western civilization to see its
contradictions, as in a scene where a fellow captive uses an illustrated Bible to explain
how he can identify with Jesus. And there is a touching scene between lawyer and
client in which Joadson at last talks to Cinque as a man and not as a piece in a puzzle.
“Give us free!” Cinque cries in a powerful moment in the courtroom, indicating how
irrelevant a “not guilty” verdict would be to the real facts of his case.

At its heart, Amistad is a tale of human courage. Cinque is a heroic figure whose spirit
remains unbreakable regardless of the pain and indignity he is subjected to. He is a free
man, not a slave, and, while he recognizes that he may die as a result of his struggle,
he will not give it up. Effectively portrayed by newcomer Djimon Hounsou, whose
passion and screen presence arrest our attention, Cinque is the key to viewers seeing
the Amistad Africans as more than symbols in a battle of ideologies. They are
individuals, and our ability to make that distinction is crucial to the movie's success. To
amplify this point, Spielberg presents many scenes from the Africans' point-of-view,
detailing their occasionally-humorous observations about some of the white man's
seemingly-strange "rituals".

The larger struggle is, of course, one of defining humanity. As the Nazis of Schindler’s
List (also Spielberg’s movie) felt justified in slaughtering Jews because they viewed their
victims as "sub-human," so the pro-slavery forces of Amistad use a similar defense. The
abolitionists regard the Africans as men, but the slavers and their supporters see them
as animals or property. In a sense, the morality of slavery is on trial here with the
specter of civil war, which would break out less than three decades later, looming over
everything.
Amistad's presentation of the legal and political intricacies surrounding the trial are
fascinating, making this movie one of the most engrossing courtroom dramas in recent
history. Four claimants come forward against the Africans: the state, which wants them
tried for murder; the Queen of Spain, who wants them handed over to her under the
provision of an American/Spanish treaty; two American naval officers, who claim the
right of high seas salvage; and the two surviving Spaniards from La Amistad, who
demand that their property be returned to them. Baldwin must counter all of these
claims, while facing a challenge to his own preconceived notions as the result of a
relationship he develops with Cinque. Even though attorney and client are divided by a
language barrier, they gradually learn to communicate.

Aside from Cinque, who is a fully-realized individual, characterization is spotty, but the
acting is top-notch. Matthew McConaughey successfully overcomes his "pretty boy"
image to become Baldwin, but the lawyer is never particularly well-defined outside of his
role in the La Amistad case. Likewise, while Morgan Freeman and Stellan Skarsgard
are effective as Joadson and Tappan, they are never anything more than "abolitionists."
Nigel Hawthorne, presents Martin Van Buren as a spineless sycophant to whom justice
means far less than winning an election. Finally, there's Anthony Hopkins, whose
towering portrayal of John Quincy Adams is as compelling as anything the great actor
has recently done and Richard Nixon, makes us believe that he is Adams where his ten-
minute speech delivers a quiet, dignified argument for freedom with the power to set
men free, both then and now in which it is unforgettable.

This is film making at its best, moving us, making us aware, and then helping us realize,
if only for a moment, the Africans are not different, they share a universal desire to be
free.

3. PRESUMED INNOCENT
Intelligent, complex and enthralling, “Presumed Innocent” (citywide) is one of those rare
films where all the players seem to be in a state of grace, where the working of the
machinery never shows and after it’s over, one runs and reruns its intricacies with a
profound sense of satisfaction.

Presumed Innocent" opens on a shot of a jury box in an empty courtroom, the shadows
dark along the walls, the wood tones a deep oxblood, the whole room suggesting that
they should abandon hope, those who enter here.

On the soundtrack we hear Harrison Ford talking about his job as a prosecuting
attorney, but as he speaks of the duty of the law to separate the guilty from the
innocent, there is little faith in his voice that the task can be done with any degree of
certainty.
"Presumed Innocent" has at its core one of the most fundamental fears of civilized man:
the fear of being found guilty of a crime one did not commit. That fear is at the heart of
more than half of Hitchcock's films, and it is one reason they work for all kinds of
audiences. Everybody knows that fear.

This movie is based on a best-selling novel by Scott Turow that became notorious for its
explicit sexual content - for the detail in which it examined shocking gynecological
evidence - and yet the sex wouldn't have sold many copies without the fear. How do you
defend yourself against a charge of rape when you were having an affair with the dead
woman, and your fingerprints are on a glass in her apartment, and the phone records
reveal that you called her earlier in the evening, and it would appear that your semen
has been found at the scene of the crime? This is, as everybody knows by now, the
dilemma in which Rusty Sabich finds himself, midway through "Presumed Innocent."
Sabich, played by Harrison Ford as a man whose flat voice masks great passions and
terrors, plays an assistant state's attorney who is assigned to the murder of a young
woman lawyer in his office. Her name was Carolyn Polhemus (Greta Scacchi), and she
had the ability to mesmerize men, especially those who could do her some good.
Among those men, we discover, was Rusty Sabich himself - and also his boss, State's
Attorney Raymond Horgan (Brian Dennehy), who has assigned him to the case.

At first the investigation goes slowly, but Rusty's closeness to the case gradually
becomes more damaging as the evidence that is examined suddenly became an
incriminating and he finds himself named as the accused. The situation is made trickier
because Dennehy faces an election in a few days and as his political opponents seek to
capitalize on a much publicized crime. How does it look when the law and order
candidate has a rapist and murderer on his own staff? That will look bad on his part and
will be took as an advantage by his rival candidates. Rusty character faces the complete
collapse of his life as he knew it in where he is soon in the hands of the very criminal
justice system he once enforced. Virtually the entire second half of the film is devoted to
his trial, with the skilled and debonair Sandy Stern (Raul Julia) as his defense attorney,
but at no time does Rusty offer his own account of what happened.

Standing by him, but bitter because of his infidelity, is his wife, played by Bonnie
Bedelia. Where in the epilogue part, it was shown that at his home, Rusty discovers a
small hatchet covered with Carolyn's blood and hair on it. As he washes the tool,
Barbara admits that she murdered Carolyn, her motive being Rusty's adulterous affair.
She expresses that she had left enough evidence for Rusty to know that she committed
the crime, but did not anticipate him being charged with the murder. In a voice-over,
Rusty explains that Carolyn's murder has been written off as unsolved, since trying two
people for the same crime is "a practical impossibility" and he cannot leave his son
without a mother even if she could be tried. Rusty regrets that it was his own lust that
caused his wife to commit murder.
Mr. Ford, who comes alive in the flashbacks recalling his tempestuous affair with
Carolyn, spends much of the film with a wary, cautious expression masking all other
emotions. He does this with flawless delicacy, just as Ms. Bedelia brings the right
mixture of grief, anger and bewilderment to the wife's role. Mr. Julia, the actor whose
casting here is most surprising (since Mr. Turow's Sandy Stern is a far less glamorous
figure), is also highly, cannily effective. And Paul Winfield, as the blunt, outspoken judge
who in the end best embodies Mr. Turow's view of the criminal justice system, steals
just about every courtroom scene.

Ms. Scacchi, who has an exceptional tan for a Midwestern prosecutor and who is more
than happy to show it off, appears in the film only briefly. But with her perfect torso
stretched languidly across the screen, she provides as pure a motive as any murder
mystery could need. One of the film's few unfortunate sequences shows how Carolyn,
while at work on a child abuse case, first caught Rusty's eye. The film strikes a note of
desperate inappropriateness as it shows an enraptured Rusty admiring the way Carolyn
interrogates a young torture victim.

The lead performance, by Harrison Ford, must have been a delicate balancing act,
since at every point he must seem plausible both as a killer, and as an innocent man.
Ford's taciturn and undemonstrative acting style is well suited to the challenge. Greta
Scacchi is well-cast, too, as the heartless Carolyn Polhemus, so warm and yet so cold.
The Bonnie Bedelia performance as the wife is another tricky challenge, since she, too,
must be ambiguous throughout. And the supporting performances include Paul Winfield
as a judge with hidden motives, Raul Julia as a defense attorney who can't get his client
to stop acting like a lawyer, and Dennehy, expansive and yet with a wall of flint when it
comes to saving his own skin.

This has been a summer of loud movies, of explosions and gunfire, screams and
crashes. "Presumed Innocent" is a very quiet movie, brooding and secretive, about
people who are good at masking their emotions. The audience I was with watched it
with a hush. Part of the quiet was due to the absorbing nature of the story, I suppose,
but a lot of it may have been caused by people reflecting, as I always do during stories
like this, that there - but for the grace of God - go we.