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RPPS CULTURAL SERVICES
The Rockaway Park Philosophical Society seeks to promote American culture by celebrating films which portray some aspect of the cultural milieu. The much neglected subject of the Revolution has caused us pause. We hope to inspire some writer to surpass the obstacles and produce an epic.
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Revolutionary War Movies Coat - When The World Turned Upsidedown
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RPPS Full - o - sophy
The RPPS was created in 1971 to Americanize philosophy and to promote American culture. The Society recognizes Casey at the Bat as the national epic and seeks the world's best pizzeria. JOIN WITH US IN THE FULLOSIA!
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Fullosia Press -
RPPS Main Page -
An Introduction to Fullosia -
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Come Home America
Come home to traditional music of the US/UK at
The Contemplator.
In background is heard the stirring air `Gary Owens.' This and many more at
The Contemplator.
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The Contemplator -
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RPPS FULLOSIA PRESS: Special
High Crimes (2002)
Miscellaneous Mischief ,,, a review by Sir Harrison Alfred Andrews
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Director
Carl Franklin ***
Writers
Joseph Finder (novel)
Yuri Zeltser (screenplay)
Precis: What happens when your dream world dissolves into a nightmare? Big shot lawyer Claire Kubik lives an ideal life in the plastic world of urbane California suburbia. When she takes a turn down a side street, a SWAT team moves in to arrest her husband for 12 year old war crimes. Everything she believed in turned into a lie ... In rushing to her husband's defense, who can she turn to? Who should she trust?
Dramatis Personae
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Ashley Judd .... Claire Kubik
Morgan Freeman .... Charles Grimes
James Caviezel .... Ronald Chapman
Adam Scott .... Lt. Terrence Embry
Amanda Peet .... Jackie Grimaldi
Dendrie Taylor .... Lola
Paula Jai Parker .... Gracie
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Bruce Davison .... Brig. General William Marks
Tom Bower (I) .... F.B.I. Agent Mullins
Juan Carlos Hernandez .... Major Hernandez
Michael Gaston .... Major Waldron
Jude Ciccolella .... Colonel Farrell
Emilio Rivera (I) .... Salvadoran Man
Michael Shannon (V) .... Abbott
John Billingsley (II) .... Oshman
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La Dolce Vita
Claire Kubick (Ashley Judd) lives la dolce vita, a dedicated attorney and
a young wife anxious to have a baby. Her husband Tom (James Caviezel)
and she are out Christmas shopping when they are rushed by FBI.
Taken into custody, Tom is charged with (sic) Murder First Degree and Desertion.
Unbeknownst to Claire, Tom served in the Marine Corps and deserted pending murder charges, for having shot up a Latin American village. With faith in her husband's innocence, Claire, firmly committed to defend her husband, turns down a deal for six years. Together with an immature, inexperienced Marine legal officer and a washed-out civilian attorney, Claire sets out to ferret out the truth.
Just what is the truth and does Claire really want to know?
The answer is elementary even to dear Watson. Yet the movie does have some fine points about court-martials in spite of its error in using the civilian term Murder first degree.
Conflict of Interest: In Defence of One's Relations
The (American) Code of Professional Responsibility says that a lawyer shall exercise independent professional judgement.
Obvious this means that the lawyer must stand above outside pressure from courts and government to zealously represent his/her client.
Less obvious is that the lawyer must stand apart from the client as well.
Lets see this in action.
Claire's decision to represent her husband is a bad but understandable decision. Close relatives should never undertake representation of family members. Yet the trial bar daily violates this apothogem. Egos the size of Texas fuel trial attorneys. None could possibly imagine anyone better. Yet a lawyer must make tough decisions, give advice clients don't want to hear and divorce him/herself of the emotions of the client's situation. How can our heroine do that when she has been busy trying to make babies with Tom?
This conflict in roles between spouse and lawyer looms to great significance in the rejection of a plea to a lesser offense.
The decision to turn down the deal for six years is reprehensible, but once again understandable. Although Tom is clearly guilty of desertion, it might not appear such to a loving spouse. A spouse might accept as given Tom's declaration that he deserted out of fear of being killed; a court-martial would not.
Even if the extra-legal incursion in which Tom participated doesn't qualify as a war during which the death penalty for desertion is authorized, Tom's desertion has two aggravating factors: pending charges and in armed conflict. A hefty penalty would be appropriate.
In the military the desertion charge might be considered more serious by many military judges and panel member (jurors) than murdering a foreignor, particularly when the foreignor is killed in reprisal. Punishment parties are regarded as a necessary part of military muscle, even if editors of the Times think it ought not be so.
Yet a lawyer spouse unfamiliar with military attitudes and military law might "buy-off on" her husbands excuse that he "booked-up" pending charges because he was afraid. The very admission of such a "fear" in a military court would cook him and push the sentence to the max.
The Times to the country, Clemenceau's adage "military justice is to justice as military music is to music" still pertains. As stirring as military music might be, even the Air Force, after legendary General Harmon, chose not to keep up with the pop chart.
Military Legal Officers: JAGs on trial
The standard charge given by dear old Judge Dennison in my time in the service read, "Military counsel are lawyers duly qualified by the bars of their home state and are certified by the Judge Advocate General to try and defend court-martials."
What exactly does that mean?
The nerdy military defense counsel is characteristic, not merely a micro-abberation. Most military lawyers are new to law, young and inexperienced. To a polished lawyer they might appear to be utterly incapable. "Was I ever that bad?," Claire might have enquired. (You were even if your Texas-sized ego can't admit.) The appeal of the military in recruiting is precisely that the young lawyer will get many early opportunities to defend major cases. Everyone learns somewhere, a thought which perhaps would not seem comforting to Tom but is the very point of JAG recruiting officers. What responds to this call is "a wide variety of talent." Do you suppose it could be any different?
In this movie, the young lieutenant, if focused at all,concentrates his energies not on the case but on Claire's rather loose sister who has become the defence team's camp follower. Take a young, inexperienced under-paid lawyer and give him such an unexpected fringe benefit and what follows is predictable, even if Claire disapproves.
Military society is a close one. Thus the prosecutors and defense counsel do more than drink together: enemies in court, friends without. Does this work in the defendant's favor? I doubt it.
A very sharp prosecutor might have abandoned the war crimes charge which could draw empathy for the accused from a military panel (jury) in order to concentrate on the desertion charge which will earn the accused no favor. Yet, although not discussed in this movie, the military ties the hands of the prosecutor as much or at least as effectively by limiting the prosecutor's tactical discretion as it mutes the defense by over-loading it with youth and inexperience.
Effete Liberal Society
The movie does not limit itself to a probing critique of the JAG Corps; it strikes out at effete liberal society and its askewed values. Theoretically as part of a commitment to an independent legal profession, civilian society lives by the rule that lawyers must rush to the defence of unpopular causes and unpopular people.
Indeed Claire is celebrated for having taken on the defence of slimy characters who have committed evil deeds. But liberal society sanctions defence for some evils and not others. The fanfare and flush of victory in a miscreant's cause are just tapering off when, without much ceremony, Claire is tossed from the exaulted corner office for undertaking the defence of an accused war criminal.
According to its own standard of political correctness, liberal society picks and chooses which nastiness is nice enough to be defended.
Sir Harrison Alfred Andrews
Sir Harry says of the United States it is more of a state of mind than a national state. "It's only a dream... That's why the movies are so real to us."
Other writings by Sir Harry:
Gary Owens Sir!: Mel Gibson in We Were Soldiers
The Debbil Takes His Own: Devil's Disciple (with jd collins)
A Dreary Apocalyptic Vision:
Omega Man
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