(Mild Spoilers) Tension packed made for TV courtroom drama thats refreshingly lacking, in it's non-politically-correct script, the usual and predictable ending that were so used to seeing in these kinds of justice films.
Famous Emmy Awarding winning talk show host Waynne Atwood follows her cheating husband Gregory Toland to his lovers Jane Carlisle's apartment and then catching him with his paths down blows him away with a bullet in his head. There's no doubt that Waynne shot and killed her husband since she immediately called the police and turned herself in. What the trial is all about is the mental state that she was in at the time of the shooting.
At the trial Waynn's lawyer Wilfred Francicus makes the case that his client was driven to the brink of insanity by the abuse, both physically and mentally, that she suffered at the hands of her husband Greg and was not in control of her actions at the time of the shooting.
The prosecution brought out the fact that Waynne was cold and calculating in her action to the point where she calmly told her rival, Jane Carlisle, for her husband's Greg's affection not to worry about being killed she thought of killing her at first but now changed her mind. This set the stage for the last half of of movie that exploded with both rage and fury in the jury room and divided the jurors, for the most part, on gender lines. The are men for conviction feeling that Waynne was totally in control of her faculties when she killed Greg. The women on the jury feel that she was driven to the point where she didn't know right from wrong and was not responsible for what she did thus she was innocent by reason of insanity.
The evidence is skillfully presented and analyzed by the jurors and it later turns out that one of them, the foreman Karl Weber, is more interested in making a buck on the case, after it's over by writing a book about it, then in finding out if Waynne is innocent or guilty.The final ending doesn't come as a shock at all because we the audience see the evidence, like the jury did, and realize that the conclusion the jurors came up with was the only fair and just verdict in the Waynne Atwood/Gregopry Toland case.
Kelly McGillis is wonderful as the forewoman of the jury and it was touching ,as well as painful, to watch how she didn't allow her emotions to take over her logic and also how she kept the rest of the jurors from almost resorting to violence during the emotionally packed deliberations.
Both Conrad Dunne & Nicky Guadagni as jurors Rafael Ramos & Beryl Granger were outstanding as the two jurors with totally different views about the case and who were involved in the most explosive scenes in the movie. Even they as divided as they were on Waynne's guilt or innocence came to the same conclusion when the evidence, that was right there in front of their noses but what they didn't at first notice, presented itself to them.
Outstanding courtroom drama that's every bit as good as the 1957 Henry Fonda courtroom classic "12 Angry Men" where in this movie it was seven women and five men who came to the very startling and righteous verdict at the end of the film.
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