Where I Watched it: Paramount Plus

English Audio Description Provided By: Roundabout

Narrated By: Elias

Recently, we lost director William Friedkin, who had already earned his place among the best directors of all time. He’s been in that group since his 1971 Best Picture winner The French Connection, which he followed up with the horror classic The Exorcist. Honestly, he could have just stopped there. He probably should have. Though his career does include some fondly remembered films like To Live and Die in LA, it also features the Al Pacino flop Crusin, the David Caruso forgotten erotic thriller Jade, and oddly, Bug.

So, is his final film, The Caine Mutiny Court Marshal worth watching? Absolutely. Sadly, it’s one of his better films, and reminds me a lot of another one of his project which I think time has forgotten, his remake of 12 Angry men starring Jack Lemmon. Yes, there was a remake, but your initial reaction should have been neutralized when i said Jack Lemmon.

Here, he takes Jason Clarke as the lead defense attorney, and Monica Raymond for the prosecution, and spends the whole movie going through testimonies to find out if there was a reason for a mutiny on board the naval vessel or if Kiefer Sutherland’s decorated captain was of sound mind during a terrible storm.

The court room drama is done really well, with various characters coming in and out, and the acting being very much the reason to watch. honestly, Monica Raymond, who stars in a little seen TV show called hightown, is the big winner here. She has the fire and attack with purpose behind her prosecution that reminded me so much of Tom Cruise in A Few Good men. This might be a boys club, but she will not let that stop her, and Raymond delivers a consistently compelling performance from beginning to end.

The men in the film are all great, from Sutherland as the potentially unstable captain, to Clarke as a defense attorney who doesn’t quit. Even lance Reddick, in one of his final roles, is fantastic here as the judge. Friedkin’s only mistake is ever leaving the court room.

There’s a final scene that takes place somewhere else, and it totally deflates the energy of the drama, and if you just stop watching the movie about five minutes early, you end up with a much stronger project.Not everything needs a cherry on top.

obviously, since this is a limited set, with limited characters mostly all in their uniforms, Elias doesn’t have much to do here except focus on facial reactions.The amount of dialogue in here also keeps the audio description low, and while I’m not really a fan of his audio description in the past, I can’t say that this project is the one to live or die by. Even a stronger narrator would have still had a difficult time interjecting, and with so little change in setting or design, audio description is not the first thing you notice.

A really solid final film for Friedkin, who may have had a mixed career, but when it counted, he absolutely knew how to hit the right home run at the right time. We can always chalk up the failings of some of those other films to the lack of marketing, too much or too little studio involvement, or the fact that David Caruso wasn’t a movie star.

Final Grade: A-