Find Me Guilty

In Find Me Guilty, based on a true story of the New Jersey mob, a racist and self-serving prosecutor spends the public's money on a two-year trial against several dozen gangland defendant's, one of whom chooses to defend himself. Though the movie was marketed as a wacky comedy and boasts a soundtrack that could have been lifted from My Cousin Vinny, what Lumet has really created is an uncertain and pessimistic meditation on the faults of the American Legal System. In particular, he probes how poorly designed our courtroom systems are for divining any sort of verifiable truth or settling any real-world disputes.

What's amazing is how Sidney Lumet's ideas have kept up with such rapidly-evolving times. 12 Angry Men was cutting edge in 1957, with its notion of neurotic jurors basing their verdict on their own prejudices rather than the facts of the case. Network was dead-on incisive about the pernicious effect of television on the public dialogue in 1976. Find Me Guilty once again challenges conventional wisdom about the grim machinery of our society - does a jury trial determine guilt or innocence or does it serve merely as a popularity contest, confirming one side of an argument as True andthe other as False for the purposes of closure?



Nothing in the film is straight-forward. There are no one-sided individuals, easily identified as Good or Evil. After years of failed attempts, District Attorney Sean Kierney (Linus Roache) finally succeeds in turning enough witnesses to put the Mob on trial. Though dependent on the testimony of ex-convicts and drug addicts, he has never lost a case and remains solely focused on victory.

Putting 50 or so individual mobsters on trial at once turns out to be a nearly-unmanageable fate. Each defendant tires his own lawyer, one of whom, Ben Klandis (Peter Dinklage in a performance that should be remembered in awards season but won't be), quickly assumes control. Each defendant, that is, save for loudmouth Jackie DiNorscio (Vin Diesel).

Already serving time on an unrelated charge, Jackie Dee has lost faith in lawyers. He figures that, representing himself, at least he can fall back on his the easygoing charm that has worked in his favor for years. Diesel's as good as he's ever been in a movie, by leaps and bounds, as Jackie Dee. An annoying goofball who loves puns and bad jokes (his constant refain during the trial is "I'm not a gangster, I'm a gagster!"), Jackie nevertheless hangs on to a bit of the menace that allowed him for function on the street and in prison for so many years.

Sometimes, even when he's trying to be funny or sweet, he comes off as demanding or territorial. There is definitely something possessive and unsettling about his frequently-dropped reminders that he "grew up with these guys" and they "all love each other." Is this merely an invocation of kindship, or does it also serve as an unspoken demand for loyalty?

Jackie finds himself at odds with not only Kierney's office but also a baffled judge (Ron Silver). Refusing to prolong an already long trial and not wanting to see his eventual verdict overturned, Judge Finestein allows the proceeding to degrade into something approaching a kangaroo court. One defendant must be wheeled into court in his hospital bed. Jackie engages witnesses with whimsical anecdotes and confesses to crimes (like cocaine use) for which he isn't on trial. When he screws up, he endangers the case of all the defendants, who are on trial for conspiracy and thus can't afford to have any guilty verdicts issued for anyone.

With all its various rules, asides and points of order, Lumet's vision of a trial more closely resembles the O.J. Simpson case than most actual legal proceedings. Still, it's clear that he sees the entire process as a form of political theater, presenting two diametrically-opposed versions of events, neither of which seem to completely reflect reality. Isn't the truth neccessarily in between both of these stories? Will a "Guilty" or "Innocent" verdict ever truly summarize exactly what happened and provide for truly fair punishment?

Lawyer Klondis, played by little person Peter Dinklage, has to have a podium pulled up to the jury box for him when he makes his opening and closing statements. This little act of stagecraft comes to represent the entire trial. Despite all the various forms of evidence presented, each of which can be spun any number of ways, the jury will ultimately decide the case based on their gut instinct, who they choose to believe. Lumet seems to insist that it can't be any other way. (In one brilliant sequence, he cuts back and forth between the prosecuting and defense attorneys, each of whom debate amongst themselves whether Jackie Dee's antics will curry favor with the jury or turn them against the occasionally mysogynist confessed criminal).

Towards the end of the film, Jackie is handcuffed and set to return to prison on his prior charge, and he watches his co-defendants go home at the end of the day, back to their wives and families and suburban homes. He's risking everything to stand up for them, to represent their community as one of love and respect and commitment, and they don't really seem too concerned with his ultimate fate. Nothing in this film is simple and straight-forward, even Jackie's dependable Code of Honor.