Heroics For Some

JUSTICE IS ONE of those words in the American vocabulary that has two different interpretations--one on paper and one in real life. The one on paper says everybody gets what they deserve; the one in real life says it depends on who you are and who you know. The two only meet in the land of make-believe. Like in this movie.

In an interview last week in his Ritz-Carlton hotel room, Norman Jewison, director of And Justice For All, discussed why he made the movie--"I've always felt there were two laws in this country. One for the rich and one for the poor. I've always been suspicious of lawyers, but I've only seen the films about kindly lawyers."

Remember Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird? Atticus risked his life to try to save Tom Robinson, which ultimately, he failed to do. Jewison loved that movie, so he made a sequel.

Gregory Peck's Atticus is an especially hard act to follow, but Jewison found a superb successor in the person of Al Pacino. Pacino, who plays Arthur Kirkland, the film's do-good hero, first made the big time as Michael in The Godfather. He made it again as the run down hero of Serpico thee years ago, but there's been a drought since. Now comes Arthur Kirkland, who works perfectly for Pacino because he's a blend of Michael Corleone and Serpico. Like Corleone, Kirkland wants to do everything himself; like Serpico, he's a man fighting society in the name of justice. The part's tailor-made for Pacino.

The film begins with a simple bit of prose, beaten into the ground in grade school and forgotten after age 15--the pledge of allegiance. "The pledge of allegiance is a very big thing," Canadian-born Jewison said last week. To make this point, he recruited Lazlo Kovak--a cameraman whose strong sense of style attracted most of the critical acclaim for Woody Allen's Interiors. The voices of children in the background rise as Kovak zeroes in on a blackboard and an American flag--"and to the republic for which it stands one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." Freeze--a police car and run-down jailhouse.

One of the best thing about Valerie Curtin and Barry Levinson's choppy, overstated and confusing script is its interplay of satire and serious drama. They balance the two perfectly, switching, for instance, from a frenzied scuffle between courtroom guards and one of Kirkland's clients, to a bitter confrontation in the courthouse hall with a disdainful and cruel judge.

Another serious touch is the tenderness of Kirkland's grandfather, Sam, the guiding force in the young lawyer's life. At one point, Kirkland tells his grandfather's friend, "You know if he (Sam) goes. I don't know what I'd do." But Jewison chooses an odd route of saving us from this terrifying conclusion--he never mentions Sam again.

Lately, every movie with a strong leading man has a Diane Keaton counterpart, a woman who stand three inches taller and carries a superwoman image. In Justice Christine Lahti is Gail Packer, a three-piece-suited lawyer who believes she's doing her part for humanity by serving on an ethics committee that investigates lawyers.

Kirkland: You think you re doing something, but you're just skimming the surface. You're missing the real power.

Packer: What powers?

Kirkland: You don't know? You mean you really don't know?

Packer: No, I don't. Tell me.

Kirkland: Then we know they're safe.

Kirkland's got a strong point, but it's a point he doesn't yet believe. Only after he defends a gay accused of robbing a cabbie, a man jailed for months for a missing taillight, and a stiff trial judge accused of rape and sodomy, does he realize how justice overlooks the powerful while staring down the poor.

IF KIRKLAND DID EXIST, he'd had died of exhaustion long ago. Halfway through the movie, you're overwhelmed by the feeling that he should go into another field. Any field. Jewison said the cases in the movie are all based on actual incidents, a believable fact. But if the cases are true, they couldn't all be taken by the same lawyer--no one could handle a caseload like Kirkland's.

But even after a look at the corrupt side of America's courts, Jewison still believes there's room for Arthur Kirklands out there somewhere. With a wry grin sitting in his 10th-floor suite, he attested "Arthur Kirkland is somehow true to himself. Justice is done." And Atticus Finch lives on.