Justice

1999 "Justice Under Siege"
4.5| 1h43m| en
Details

A lawyer and her partner run from the Colombian Mafia and the corrupt U.S. marshals and attorneys assigned to protect them.

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Reviews

JinRoz For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!
Glucedee It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.
AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.
Portia Hilton Blistering performances.
elshikh4 If you wanna be sarcastic this movie gives you more than one chance : (Tracey Needham) was taller and bigger than everybody !, (Charles Durning) was a 76 years old cop !?? having that one titan paunch ! So how in god's name he could manage to ride the motorcycle at the end being disguised as one of the road's patrol !!??, (James Belushi) was shorter than (Needham) so I bet they made him stand on something while he was kissing her ! Not to mention that he looked older than her too !!, and the nice loving cop (Patrick Ersgard) seemed all the time like (Tom Green)'s look-alike !?. Well, despite the fact that nearly all of them delivered such a wonderful performance yet all of them with-each-others had weak chemistry or some kind of disharmony ! On the other hand, the script was very good with the smart thrilling treatment for its main case, and those many points of view about justice (blind as helpless, or half blind to let us fulfill it by other ways than the law !) with strong characters, conflict, and some clever lines too (mostly for the character of the old detective Moe Ryan/Durning). But it wasn't that excellent too because some reasons; one of them is the hastiness. For big instance : the love story between the undercover officer (Belushi) and the hunted lawyer (Needham) was very fabricated ! Just 2 or 3 scenes with a dialogue about perfection and fighting for justice, then a night in bed !? (WAW if only life was like this !). Without any sort of deliberation, I think it wasn't a big problem for them to add some more scenes or dialogues to convince the characters so to convince us. And for small instance : considering the condition of (Durning)'s age and belly; why didn't they make him a retired detective who works now as private eye ?!, then look at the scenes of (Jobeth Williams) they were shot all in her office; that's boring if you ask me, moreover too damn TV for the cinematic sense of the story ! The direction handled the subject well but what is it with all of those strange cuts like an old movie from the 1940s or the old Star Wars' movies ! I didn't like it as a goofy element compared to the whole thing !. While the music was loyal to the atmosphere especially at the start it didn't keep up with the heat of the movie's rest. The lighting was generally excessive which made the image a dully shiny white for most of the time ! And finally that bullheaded determination to film maybe everything in close-ups as another typical TV movie ??! As if somebody will sue them if they did anything more !? I must admit that there were some exceptional factors like (Charles Durning)'s lovable performance (even his Rambo's war scream at the shooting was lively & harmonic), the beauty of (Tracey Needham); actually she was extremely sweet, dazzlingly fascinating, and madly sexy in a way I've never seen her whether before or after ! Like a rare mix of Meg Ryan, Melanie Griffith, and Marilyn Monroe yet in a very serious shape ! It's an old custom of mine to read the subtitles, but whenever there was a scene of her I didn't care about anything but her face !, and eventually this very script which could've been made for the big screen indeed (with the expensive stars, the nude sex scene !, couple of smashing explosives, and maybe a slick twist at the end !) Though this movie is a nice entertaining one with fair acting, well-done thrill, an acrid satire, and not completely having that easy happy ending also whereas the basic 2 drugs' lords ran away at last so justice (by the law or by bare hands) is not entirely perfect ! They wanted a TV night movie and they made one so justly. However if you felt a little frustration after watching then that's because your own belief that this movie wasn't quite just to its powerful potentials; they deserve more than that customary TV work.
xredgarnetx JUSTICE, or BACKLASH, was a dull and plodding TV flick about a prosecutor attempting to avoid being executed by a Colombian drug cartel. I watched it thinking it was going to be a Jim Belushi vehicle, but Belushi wasn't the star. A TV actress named Tracey Needham was, and while she was very attractive, she ain't no Jim Belushi. I didn't quite make it to the end, as I had to leave for work and I was getting bored anyhow. Charles Durning co-starred to no particular effect. While glossily photographed, JUSTICE looks like it was strictly a paycheck for all involved, including the legendary and ageless Henry Silva as Sal the Joker. And here we go again: IMDb wants more lines, God knows why. Brevity is often the beauty of a movie review. But not here. No sir-ee, Bob. You gotta drag these things out. Drag them out, I say!
jgpenner I guess I've become spoiled by watching mainly good movies in recent years, but this was by far the worst movie I have seen in a long, long time. It didn't even have the redeeming virtue of being entertainingly bad; it was just plain BAD. The acting was uniformly wooden, and the script was laughable. I was deluded into thinking that the film was worth seeing by the fact that James Belushi and JoBeth Williams were in it, and even Charles Durning is often good for a laugh if nothing else. God knows what they thought they were doing when they agreed to appear in this turkey.
davidbr All films must necessarily proceed from the script. When the script is drawn from the Collected Cliches of North America and the largest line item on the budget is cocaine acquisition, the result must be worth far less than the life force used to view it. The only good thing I can say about this movie is that Tracey Needham is pleasant to look at once she wipes off the Marilyn Monroe makeup.