Delayed Reaction: Witness for the Prosecution

Premise: An older English barrister takes on the case of a man accused of murder.

Courtroom dramas age the poorest of nearly any genre; unless you are able to turn off that key corner of your brain. Thanks to decades of legal shows, not to mention increasingly in-depth true crime documentaries, audiences now have a better bullshit meter when it comes to this genre than ever. Mix that with the fact that, as technology has improved, our understanding of what "sufficient evidence" is has advanced, and it's hard for any courtroom drama to really work after maybe a decade or two*. Something like My Cousin Vinny holding up pretty well after 30 years is more the exception than the rule.

*Yes. I know there were always contemporary lawyers who watched these movies and complained about the inaccuracies. I'm thinking more about general audiences though.

So, I watch something like Witness for the Prosecution and it's hard for me to get sucked into the case. I spent too much of the trial noticing inconsistencies or fixating on the flimsiness of the evidence. There's also the fact that in the nearly 100 years since Agatha Christie wrote the story, they've made every variation of this story before so that it's impossible to surprise me. I audibly laughed when this movie ended with a plea not to spoil the ending. By today's standards, that's not much of a twist. I believe it was at the time though. Audiences evolve. That's a fact that older movies (and all older media really) have to contend with.

The way to get around this problem is to have something else to offer. Normally, that's the performances. I really enjoyed the characters in this movie. Charles Laughton's Sir Wilfrid Robarts is delightfully full of tics and nastiness. I really enjoy how much he bickers with his nurse (Elsa Lanchester). He's always scheming to get around her watchful eye and even in the most dramatic moments of the trial, he seems equally concerned with proving that he's taking his medicine. These are characters I'd follow around for numerous trials.

I'm not great at turning off the part of my mind needed to appreciate this as a classic*, but I'll say it's certainly a very enjoyable Agatha Christie adaptation and more entertaining than a lot of movies I see from that era.

*AFI certainly thinks it's a classic, calling it the 6th best American Courtroom Drama.

Verdict: Weakly Recommend