“The accumulated effect of ‘Find Me Guilty,’ with its litany of absurdities, is that it is better to deliver the accused from continued subjugation than to maintain faith in a system that has lost all claim to its moral authority.”
Like this:
Like Loading...
“In ‘Night Falls on Manhattan,’ Lumet arrives at acceptance — the system is what it is. He is resigned to his inability to chronicle any meaningful change through his work.”
Like this:
Like Loading...
“As a chronicler of the justice system in a dozen or more films, Lumet is intimately concerned with the ways in which it represses individual thought and fails to live up to its supposedly defining principles.”
Like this:
Like Loading...
“The thrill of a film like ‘Q & A’ comes in watching how Lumet finds new ways to level his criticisms, harnessing the cynicism that has propelled his work and suffusing each frame with deep, corrupting rot.”
Like this:
Like Loading...
“Though Sidney Lumet is by and large a classical filmmaker who privileges wide shots, staging and judicious framing over highly expressive techniques, ‘Daniel’ is one of his most formally adventurous works.”
Like this:
Like Loading...
“‘The Verdict’ is Lumet’s morality play, a palate-cleanser after the bitter cynicism of his previous film that affirms the fundamental goodness of a few ordinary people within the justice system.”
Like this:
Like Loading...
“‘Prince of the City’ is a taxing, draining experience, but one that is ultimately rooted in very real despair; the system, it argues, has failed. If these characters are the products of the American criminal justice system, then it ought to be blown up.”
Like this:
Like Loading...
“By creating such a sympathetic, human subject, Lumet deepens the impact of his institutional critique of the justice system; its dehumanizing effect on American society seems all the more tragic when Sonny is its victim.”
Like this:
Like Loading...
“With ‘Serpico,’ Lumet becomes a defining chronicler of American institutional corruption, most obviously within the justice system.”
Like this:
Like Loading...
“For a filmmaker usually so concerned with the social causes of injustice, ‘The Offence’ is remarkably focused on the troubled psychology of its central character.”
Like this:
Like Loading...