Silent Witness

"Silent Witness" is one of my favourite free-standing lawyer books, so when I found it available for streaming I was rather excited. The book has a fairly standard core storyline, but it is moved into the "excellent" category because of the depth of character development. In a way this is carried over into the film, in that Dermot Mulroney and Michael Cudlitz match very closely the mental image one forms of the lawyer and his friend who has been accused of murder. But one needs to have read the book to know why. The third key character, played by the excellent Anne Heche is, I think, under-used in the script with the result that a wealth of her character development as the story unfolds is lost. The key problem here is that the book depends heavily and successfully on a detailed back story, and I can imagine the difficulty in fitting this all in to an average-length film. Supporting characters do rather better, in part because understanding them is not so dependent upon the under-used back story. Judd Hirsch puts in a sterling performance as the older lawyer and Lisa Berry is a thoroughly convincing prosecutor. The quality of the film is enhanced by the court scenes, which are rather proficient and not, I think, of the run-of-the-mill Perry Mason-type. The resolution of the story is less convincing in the film as use of certain parts of the back-story would be problematic. The moral: enjoy the film, but read the book!