Criminal Lawyer 720p Movies

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a5c7b9f00b Alcoholic lawyer sobers up to defend friend in murder case. James Ragan, a brilliant criminal lawyer is fed up with his lucrative practice and longs to retire to a quiet judgeship, but his reputation for legal, if not always ethical, courtroom tricks sidetracks his desire and he continues with his chosen profession. Afrer several exciting (and episodic) cases, requiring all his talents, including defending his personal bodyguard, &quot;Moose&quot; Hendrcks on a murder charge,he eventually get an appointment and becomes known as Judge Ragan. Pat O&#39;Brien gives one of his greatest later day performances. While not quite past his prime, he&#39;s a bit paunchy, yet filled with passion, playing a defense attorney with quite a few tricks left up his sleeve. He&#39;s not above being a little crafty in getting his clients off, proving that key witness Charles Lane isn&#39;t as sound-sighted as he suggests. In fact, the moment you see Lane, remembering all those bespeckled characters he&#39;s played, you know he&#39;s an easy target. Then, in another case (where he&#39;s not the attorney of record, just an adviser), he uses a variety of different types to prove that anybody can be guilty of hitting a pedestrian, no matter drunk or sober. When a cute old lady lies injured on the ground, her eyes open with a twinkle, and there&#39;s a sly laugh from the writers to the audience.<br/><br/>The major storyline shows his decline into a drunken depression when his sly ways prevent him from getting a judgeship he so desperately wants. When his right hand man (giant Mike Mazurki in his best performance) is accused of murdering one of O&#39;Brien&#39;s rivals, he must pull himself together to defend him, even though the cards are stacked against him. Mazurki is almost wife-like to O&#39;Brien, loyal to a fault, and at one point, even wearing a woman&#39;s kitchen apron while preparing for a dinner party. This gentle giant (the Brad Garrett of his day) is obviously not all there, yet his devotion to his employer is very touching.<br/><br/>Future &quot;Father Knows Best&quot; wife Jane Wyatt (already a veteran movie star) is very good as his loyal secretary, with outstanding character performances by T.V. veteran Marvin Kaplan, Jerome Cowan and Douglas Fowley. This is a neat little &quot;B&quot; courtroom drama with a few film noir elements (included on a five film DVD of forgotten Columbia Film Noir) that is well written, very well acted, and filled with those little details that make this type of cinema great for a look back at what made the golden age so great and why not all the cinematic gems are those whose images are usually seen in Academy Award edits or AFI tributes to the various genres of the best years of cinema. Pat O&#39;Brien stars in this B film programmer as a most successful criminal attorney well aware that he&#39;s called shyster behind his back and occasionally to his face. As we see in the film this man has a lot of tricks up his sleeve to get clients off. But he&#39;d really like to become a judge and leave it all behind. <br/><br/>His skills are way to valuable and the best scenes in the film are those with the extralegal methods he uses to gain acquittals. He&#39;s got a nice team of associates including secretary Jane Wyatt, office boy Marvin Kaplan, and general factotum Mike Mazurki. He also has an ambitious and treacherous associate in Robert Shayne who wants to take over.<br/><br/>O&#39;Brien&#39;s unsavory reputation has also kept him from the bench as the Bar Assocation and the white shoe lawyers that run it like Carl Benton Reid keep O&#39;Brien from the judgeship. Then when Reid has need of O&#39;Brien he has a miraculous conversion in his thinking.<br/><br/>Mazurki stands out in this film one of his best performances and he too needs O&#39;Brien in the end. His best scene is with Wyatt when he tells her why he&#39;s just become O&#39;Brien&#39;s factotum. In the supporting cast the unbilled Mary Alan Hokanson has one great scene with O&#39;Brien as the widow of a man who was killed in a motor vehicle incident that O&#39;Brien gets the driver off.<br/><br/>By the way, the way O&#39;Brien does it is one for the books.<br/><br/>Criminal Lawyer, almost criminal not to watch it.