The Best Movie Ever | Justice

We’ve done the best Batman movie ever, and we’ve done the best Superman movie ever, and now it’s time to talk about the best justice movie ever, because movies about “dawn” are pretty rare unless you count Welcome to the Dollhouse.

Not that it’s ever a bad time to talk about the concept of justice, of course. The notion that human beings must be held to a reasonable standard of behavior is the very foundation of our society. Good deeds must be celebrated and bad deeds must have consequences if humanity wants to avoid devouring itself. Many stories have an underlying theme of justice in one form or another, so picking just one film to stand out as the medium’s best examination of the theme is going to be damn near impossible for our stable of critics: Crave’s William Bibbiani and Witney Seibold, and Collider’s Brian Formo.

But once again, they have risen to the challenge. Find out which film each of our critics picked, let us know your favorites, and come back next Wednesday for an all-new, highly debatable installment of The Best Movie Ever!

Brian Formo’s Pick: Los Olvidados (1950)

Koch-Lorber

Luis Buñuel had ruffled so many feathers—with his anti-Catholic imagery in early Spanish films, his anti-Francisco Franco stance made him leave Spain, and whispers of his Communist sympathy made him step down from a museum position in the States—by 1950 he simply set out to make a film that ached for children. Even for that he was labeled “evil” by the Mexican press. The film in question was Los Olvidados. What Buñuel set out to do was direct an “attack on the sadness that ruins children before they have a chance.”

The reason why the national press called Los Olvidados “evil” is because the country had already turned a blind eye to the dire straits of many of its citizens, and Buñuel was showing it to the rest of the world. Poverty pushes people to edges of society where the powers that be can treat them with an out-of-sight, out-of-mind approach. And if sight is removed long enough, hopelessness will breed, and children have an even harder route to be seen, heard, taught, and respected. 

Olvidados concerns street kids, many of whom witness and commit crimes. Many of the kids bathe in milk or steal milk from goats, for nourishment and health, yes, but in the hands of Buñuel, also because they miss the warmth that a mother should provide. Despite being a great film full of impressive imagery, what makes Olvidados a great film about justice? Buñuel has no solutions, he uses film as a medium to ask the world at large to not turn a blind eye on the children of the world. And because Mexico was so mortified by what Buñuel presented at the biggest film festival in the world, Olvidados spurned government—which attempted to make Buñuel attach a happy ending to show that Mexico was literate and progressive—create a few provisional nets to actually try and keep their poorest children literate and progressive.

Witney Seibold’s Pick: 12 Angry Men (1957)

United Artists

The sixth amendment to the Constitution reads thus: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.” 

Although the American criminal justice system is hardly unimpeachable, the above contract at least guarantees that we’re to be judged by, ostensibly, people just like us. We may hate attending jury duty, but we should perhaps recognize that we are taking place in one of the more important and exciting pieces of civic pride that we can as citizens. This right is no better dramatized than in Sidney Lumet’s 1957 classic 12 Angry Men, a film about taking it out. 

12 Angry Men takes place in a hot room on a long day with a dozen completely impatient, sweaty white guys who just want to go home. They are there to decide the verdict in a murder trial. It seems like an open-and-shut case; a witness saw a young man stabbing his father, another witness saw him fleeing the scene, someone else found the murder weapon. It’s all on the page. Eleven of the twelve men decide the verdict right away. The twelfth (Henry Fonda), has a nagging doubt. A reasonable doubt.  He sets out to explain that this case isn’t so cut-and-dry, and all you need is to look at the facts carefully. 

These are not lawyers or experts. These are ordinary guys. They are meant to be anyone. Lumet’s film is not just a masterpiece of conversation, pacing, and atmosphere (you can really feel your shirt sticking to your back), but stands as an important symbol for the criminal justice system working at its best. A jury of peers doesn’t need to be expert, but they should take the time to talk. We should take the time to talk. It’s our right as Americans. 

William Bibbiani’s Pick: The Verdict (1980)

20th Century Fox

“Justice” is a complex concept, one that depends on societal expectations and individual standards. It could be argued that practically any movie – from Abraxas to Zardoz – is about some sort of “justice.” But legal movies are more transparent about the theme than most, and so I gravitate towards one of the best this week. The best movie about justice is The Verdict, a film that asks big questions and reduces them to an understandable scale.

Paul Newman, giving one of his best performances (which is to say, it is one of the best performances period), plays Frank Galvin, a has-been lawyer who takes on an easy case. It’s a medical malpractice suit that is guaranteed to settle out of court for a large amount of cash. Even the victim’s family is happy to take the check. But Frank, to his own surprise, can’t let the defendant off easy. Dropping table scraps to the aggrieved won’t cut it this time. Frank insists on trying the case, even though he hasn’t won a case in years.

Sometimes doing the right thing is easy. When it’s hard, even the most principled among us can be tempted to compromise. The Verdict is a riveting drama about pushing back against pragmatism, about prioritizing morality over “common” sense. What’s astounding about Sidney Lumet’s film is that it’s a preachy tale that never seems to preach. Lumet was a purveyor of realism, his films unmarred by overstatement or gloss. If The Verdict has an impact on you, it’s not because the filmmaker engaged in crass manipulation, it’s because the story was believable and had genuine weight. And The Verdict will most definitely have an impact. It’s one of the best movies ever.

Previously on The Best Movie Ever:

Top Photo: Koch-Lorber / 20th Century Fox / United Artists