A curiously belated (1990) made-for-TV movie in which Walter Matthau really proves his worth. He is so good, and production values so high, that this is a superior work to many supposedly silver-screen projects.
Set in and around a POW camp of WW2 on American soil, in which the inmates are German. Small-town USA has an authentic and believable vintage stamp, whereby a lawyer who usually deals with petty offences (Matthau) is suddenly dragged into the big-time of jurisprudence by a legal system that has been covertly prostituted by political sleight.
The way in which avuncular American simplicity is pasted as a veneer against deep-seated German intrigue and American contrivance, both legal and military, is developed in a careful and well managed way. There's a tremendous sense of foreboding grows as the pawn of sham-justice gradually becomes aware that what appears on the surface to be an open-and-shut murder trial is much, much more.
Walter Matthau is the main player here and acquits himself to perfection. But there's a complementary supporting cast who raise his game to the level we've come to expect from past performances like Charlie Varrick' or 'Pelham 123'. Lots of small and carefully-observed details hold the attention and draw the viewer into the movie's subtle plot-work.
I find very little to criticise in this movie that its good things don't trump outright. Technical issues are up to snuff. Script is solid. You'd easily be persuaded by its style that this work was 30 years older than it actually is. It's comical, it's tense; there's the sort of small-town bigotry that we associate with standard-bearers like 'In The Heat Of The Night', yet its much more recent vintage is never betrayed by ham-handed dependence upon pyrotechnics or cliché.
This movie is highly recommended viewing.
Set in and around a POW camp of WW2 on American soil, in which the inmates are German. Small-town USA has an authentic and believable vintage stamp, whereby a lawyer who usually deals with petty offences (Matthau) is suddenly dragged into the big-time of jurisprudence by a legal system that has been covertly prostituted by political sleight.
The way in which avuncular American simplicity is pasted as a veneer against deep-seated German intrigue and American contrivance, both legal and military, is developed in a careful and well managed way. There's a tremendous sense of foreboding grows as the pawn of sham-justice gradually becomes aware that what appears on the surface to be an open-and-shut murder trial is much, much more.
Walter Matthau is the main player here and acquits himself to perfection. But there's a complementary supporting cast who raise his game to the level we've come to expect from past performances like Charlie Varrick' or 'Pelham 123'. Lots of small and carefully-observed details hold the attention and draw the viewer into the movie's subtle plot-work.
I find very little to criticise in this movie that its good things don't trump outright. Technical issues are up to snuff. Script is solid. You'd easily be persuaded by its style that this work was 30 years older than it actually is. It's comical, it's tense; there's the sort of small-town bigotry that we associate with standard-bearers like 'In The Heat Of The Night', yet its much more recent vintage is never betrayed by ham-handed dependence upon pyrotechnics or cliché.
This movie is highly recommended viewing.