Lawyers and legal dramas have always made good television. Who doesn`t love seeing the intriguing characters, the intense drama of the courtroom, and the stories that shake the corridors of power? To celebrate the launch of the amazon Goliath original series, we`ve rounded up our six most popular right-wing shows, all available at no extra cost to your Prime membership. The dangerous and mass-produced chemicals that Mark Ruffalo`s tenacious lawyer, Robert Bilott, fights against can be found in seemingly boring objects like non-stick pots and pans. There`s a surprising banality in the real horrors explored in Dark Waters, the story that makes headlines by a lawyer waging a decades-long legal war against DuPont, one of the world`s most powerful companies. The kitchen table where families gather to break bread and discuss their day becomes a crime scene. To tell the often intimidating story that takes place primarily in Ohio and West Virginia, director Todd Haynes emphasizes the domestic and social aspects of the legal thriller by filming a rigid corporate vacation party and conversation outside of a Benihana with All the President`s Men and his own sense of melodrama. George Clooney made a career as the Grey Knights, and his work as the lead character in this icy New York thriller could be the culmination of his work. Clayton is a super cynical, debt-ridden “repairer,” stuck in damages control amid a massive class action lawsuit. (Think of Olivia Pope from Scandal, but somehow more intense.) He also plays poker, drives exploding cars and makes his best impression of Shiva, the god of death. Tony Gilroy`s legal drama, which has received seven Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, is fun in this way how complex conspiracy threads can be, and it has a handful of memorable exchanges — wait until you see the final confrontation with Tilda Swinton. In 1994, John Grisham was king. After the box office success of the film adaptations of his novels The Firm and The Pelican Brief in 1993 as well as his place on the bestseller list, the right-wing thriller author seemed untouchable.
His string of successes continued with The Client, which tells the rather simple story of a brave young boy (Brad Renfro) who commits suicide, and the resourceful lawyer (Susan Sarandon) who helps him take control of the system. (Tommy Lee Jones, a bit of his game here, has less to do than the ego-motivated district attorney.) As in The Firm, The Client`s mafia elements are ridiculous, filled with cartoon villains and mind-blowing legal maneuvers, and the suspense sequences towards the end flirt with total boredom, but director Joel Schumacher, who also directed the 1996 adaptation of Grisham`s A Time to Kill, plunges the film into an exaggerated swampy atmosphere. The dynamic between Renfro and Sarandon makes it one of the most touching entries of its kind. It`s easy to reduce Rob Reiner`s A Few Good Men to Jack Nicholson, who shouts, “You can`t handle the truth!” but it`s just as easy to forget how disturbing and tense a film it is about the cult nepotism of the Marines. There are a lot of moving parts in A Few Good Men, but it revolves around the murder of Marine William Santiago (Michael DeLorenzo) and the two unequal lawyers JoAnne Galloway (Demi Moore) and Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise), who are tasked with defending his accused murderers, two comrades. This puts them against Nicholson`s sinister Colonel Jessup. Although this is Aaron Sorkin`s first film as a writer, it is still one of his best screenplays, intelligent and catchy, that ends up reaching the roots of an American institution. Who is the real animal here remains to be seen, with surprising and above all satisfying effects in this tight right-wing thriller. Perhaps one of the reasons why court dramas are so reliable is that these films, much like a court case, follow an age-old protocol. Whether they are plaintiffs or defendants, we are on the side of a courageous and aspiring protagonist who needs the help of a studied legal hand to fight against an injustice. The culmination of Oliver Stone`s hyperrepositive, brain-brain-paranoid style, this epic directed by Kevin Costner that examines JFK`s assassination through the prism of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, has been criticized over the years for alleged leaps in logic and perceived failures in journalistic judgment.
As a hermetic argument, you may not find the film`s network of connections between the CIA, the Mafia, the FBI, and the military particularly compelling. But as a frenetic meditation on American outrage, a recurring theme in Stone`s work, and an included character study of perseverance, one of the key aspects of any good legal thriller, the film works.