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True Believer

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment/Sony Pictures Home Entertainment . R4 . COLOR . 104 mins . M15+ . PAL

  Feature
Contract

Courtroom dramas. You’re soaking in them. And you can largely blame David E. Kelley for that - the man who made an indelible mark on television back in the 1980s with Steven Bochco’s hugely popular series LA Law, which Kelley executive-produced and often wrote. This was the golden era of the TV law drama, a time before every second show to grace the idiot box tried to do “new and innovative” things with the safe and dramatically flexible concept of Lawyers In Action.

In 1989, with nearly three years of LA Law success proving that people were eating up law drama hook, line and sinker, it must have seemed like an irresistible idea to do a feature film based around an emotive court case that also focussed on the personal lives of its participants. Not that this sort of thing hadn’t been done before - far from it. But True Believer (originally issued in Australia under the seriously dumb title Fighting Justice during the early-90s movie-retitling frenzy that inexplicably gripped local distributors) took the LA Law ethic so seriously to heart that it seemed like the most relevant of films both dramatically (it deals, after all, with racial and drug issues amongst all the objections). Watching it today, though, it’s hard to escape the feeling that you’re looking at a half-baked episode of one of the more modern David E Kelley law melodramas (does anyone aside from Kelly do law melodrama these days?) like The Practice - all the elements, after all, are here. Except, of course, David E Kelley.

The first feature written by Wesley Strick - once the hottest writing property in Hollywood before he delivered a misfired turkey called Wolf - True Believer sees James Woods (in his legendary ‘80s over-the-top mode) play a once-great lawyer named Eddie Dodds. Eddie used to be a defender of the rights of those with a cause, but these days he’s just another defence-for-a-dime attorney who’s content to go in to bat for drug dealers and spend his evenings feeling wistful about the “old days”. He shouts. A lot. He does the manic-eyes thing that made Woods famous. In fact, he looks very, very stressed most of the time. And ironically, he’s more over the top than the classic James Woods moment on The Simpsons or the actor's parody of his own persona in John Badham's The Hard Way. Dodds’ new associate, meanwhile, is more naïve. Roger Baron is a young idealist who has for years idolised Dodds, only to go to work with him and discover that he’s well past his prime. Roger Baron quickly discovers that his sole task will be to assist in the defence of drug dealers. Roger Baron makes several impassioned speeches about the disgrace of a once-great lawyer who's now defending cocaine and speed dealers. Roger Baron is played by Robert Downey Jr. It goes without saying that the timing of this film’s release on DVD is either ironic or (more likely) humorously deliberate.

Facetiousness aside, though, both Downey and Woods have always been compelling actors, and they get plenty of opportunity to show off their skills here. The story, predictably, is one of redemption - Eddie Dodds is approached by the family of the imprisoned Shu Kai Kim, who eight years previously was jailed for the gangland murder of a rival gang member in plain view of a single witness. During his time in prison, Shu has been the target of racial attacks from the prison’s Neo-Nazi population, and in self-defence he kills one of them in plain view of dozens of inmates and wardens. Dodds in initially underwhelmed about taking the case, but as he and Baron investigate further it becomes clear that this is the kind of case Dodds used to excel at - and can again, as long as he can get things together.

The plot is, of course, one that’s now very familiar to TV fans through the various legal dramas that grace the airwaves, and there really are no surprises here. In fact, True Believer is more notable for the elements that date it so seriously - its turgid, cheesy ‘80s music score (by Terminator composer Brad Fiedel in an uncharacteristically guitar-solo-obsessed mood), the telemovie-quality opening titles with their textbook use of blocky fonts with oodles of drop-shadow (!) and the continual barely-disguised anti-marijuana messages planted throughout the script (remember, this was the “just say no” era!). Director Joseph Ruben (another former director-to-watch who has all but vanished from view) handles most of the drama in a very unfussy way, though the occasional stylish bit of photography sneaks past undetected.

Taken at face value, though, there’s plenty to enjoy here, not least the performances. Just keep in mind that while True Believer might have seemed cutting-edge back in 1989, these days it is easily shamed in both the quality and dramatic departments by a single episode of Law And Order - or The Practice, which as we hinted earlier, has a lot in common with this now-vintage film.

  Video
Contract

Old and mostly forgotten it may be, but True Believer scores the usual royal treatment from Sony Pictures’ DVD Center for this DVD release, mastered from pristine audio and video sources and encoded to perfection on a single-layer disc (the DVD Center, incidentally, always seem to do especially good work when they’re mastering for a single layer). Aside from the usual-for-the-time flecks and scratches during the opening credit sequence, this is a pristine rendering of the movie from start to finish, with everything spot-on - colours are beautifully rendered, shadow detail is perfect, sharpness is just right. The sense of true depth and clarity that’s been a hallmark of the DVD Center’s transfers is well in evidence throughout. Sony Pictures undeniably still have the lead in both hi-def telecine and MPEG encoding, and this disc provides the proof.

Somewhere out there are at least a few people for whom this movie holds warm memories; those people are going to be well pleased by this absolutely lovely video transfer, one that very nearly belies the age of the movie.

  Audio
Contract

Transferred with care from a magnetic master, the Dolby Surround soundtrack for True Believer is reproduced cleanly and without problem on this DVD. There’s the expected tape hiss and a fair amount of dynamic range compression (while common at the time, it sounds excessive today) but while this is no aural fireworks display, it serves its purpose perfectly well. It’s a dialogue-heavy film, but even the various sound effects throughout are strangely lacking in impact thanks to the audio compression used. Occasionally you’ll hear a high-frequency tone on top of the dialogue, something that probably existed on the location audio and which wouldn’t have mattered so much at the time due to the limitations of optical soundtracks; while now audible, it’s not overly distracting and is in any case very infrequent. Dialogue is perfectly clear throughout, with the sole exception of one courtroom scene where the microphone appears to have been placed way too far from the actor’s mouth.

You won’t be using this audio track to show off your new sound system, but it represents the original movie audio perfectly.

  Extras
Contract

Filmographies and capsule summaries for director Joseph Ruben and actors Woods and Downey. That’s it.

  Overall  
Contract

While coming across as seriously dated now - thanks largely to the heavily-stylised and drama-heavy legal TV dramas of recent years - True Believer has still got the capacity to entertain, thanks in no small part to the presence and performances of James Woods and Robert Downey Jr (both of whom look like alien impersonators on the front cover of this DVD, which was apparently rendered by an artist with a lip obsession). Columbia Tristar’s new DVD gives the film the usual royal treatment visually, and fans of the film shouldn’t hesitate to grab a copy. Those who are here because of the stars or the legal drama, however, should rent before buying.


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      And I quote...
    "Roger Baron makes several impassioned speeches about the disgrace of a once-great lawyer who's now defending cocaine and speed dealers. Roger Baron is played by Robert Downey Jr..."
    - Anthony Horan
      Review Equipment
    • DVD Rom:
          Pioneer 103(s)
    • MPEG Card:
          RealMagic Hollywood Plus
    • TV:
          Panasonic - The One
    • Receiver:
          Sony STR-AV1020
    • Speakers:
          Klipsch Tangent 500
    • Surrounds:
          Jamo
    • Audio Cables:
          Standard RCA
    • Video Cables:
          Monster s-video
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