The big screen's introduction to the words of Aaron Sorkin. And the big brother to his much-inferior Trial of the Chicago 7.

I miss the courtroom films of the 1990s. A Few Good Men, A Time to Kill... Grandstanding lawyers in movies that assumed the viewer was intelligent enough to understand a plot.

We have a young-ish Tom Cruise, riding high on his wave of a decade-long excellent output - some box office failures but mostly top-notch performances by the man himself. An extremely capable supporting cast and a brilliant performance by Jack Nicholson.

This film has spawned catchphrases - "You can't handle the truth!" being the most famous. And the whole film is a class-act under the direction of Rob Reiner.

Watching again after 25 years, I realised something at the end... This should have become the starting point for a quite brilliant legal drama on TV. Sadly the transition from film and TV back then was crossing a chasm in quality. TV writing was poor, movies were excellent. Had it been made today, you could expect a brilliant series to follow with a slight recasting of key actors and it could live happily on Netflix.

Instead sadly we got JAG. Life isn't fair.


9/10