Difficult-to-like black satire with an unattractive central performance by Al Pacino, who's supposed to be the only sane lawyer in a legal world gone mad. His judges include one who lets off robbers and rapists with probation, another with a suicide complex during recesses (a wildly overdone performance from Jack Warden) and a third, an ultra-hardliner (John Forsythe doing his best with a ludicrous role) who comes up himself for rape and assault. Pacino's own cases seem doomed to tragedy: two of his clients are sent unnecessarily to jail through no fault of his own: one hangs himself, the other takes hostages and is shot. If this is comedy, it is of the very blackest kind. But director Norman Jewison ensures that it's far too overblown to succeed as comedy or drama. The pace is leaden, mainly because individual scenes are time and again stretched beyond breaking point, but without fleshing out any of the background - even to the central and climactic story. Everyone shouts a lot.
