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Mar 23, 2018richmole rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
The DVD box cover makes the movie look...ho-hum boring. Imagine my surprise! This one qualifies as one of the best movies I'll see this year (2018, a safe bet, even we're only in late March...). This recent movie is THAT good. Dramatic, sure, but also oh-so-funny! The ironies are all over this TRUE story of a young black lawyer--the only lawyer--In the NAACP. His task is simple: to keep arrested American negroes out of jail and away from the hangman when they are brought to trial and found guilty because of racist prosecutors, judges, juries and, in some cases (this one, in particular) the alleged victims, too. Where? Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, maybe? Nope: Connecticut, in the enlightened (oh, okay, at least "tolerant") north. Irony, right? Terrific performance by Chadwick Boseman (Number 42; Get On Up) as the lawyer bound for greater jurisprudence glory, and also lesser-known Josh Gad as the unwitting, unwilling Jewish co-attorney for the defence (because the judge won't allow the black lawyer to say anything in his courtroom.) It's a rape case...but it is actually so, so much more... When did all this bad stuff happen? 1800s? 1920s? Nope. Mid-1940s, when America was fighting the Nazis who were bent on exterminating people not unlike the Jewish defence attorney. Like I said, ironies everywhere... Just...wow.