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RAÚL ESPARZA

JERRY ADLER

RICHARD PORTNOW

JOSH PAIS

To those well-meaning folks who believe that movie reviewers have the same kind of power as a prominent New York theater critic, I submit the sad case of Find Me Guilty. Many of the most prominent critics in the United States encouraged their readers and TV audiences to see this entertaining film from director Sidney Lumet. No one listened.

I know the reason why, because I saw it in the faces of the people I proselytized: they could not, would not, believe that Vin Diesel could possibly be starring in a movie worth seeing.

We all fall into the trap of pigeonholing actors, but this was an unfortunate case. Diesel, who has solid theater training but rose to fame as an action-movie star, altered his appearance and worked tirelessly with Lumet to bring a fascinating character to life on-screen.

Actually, Jackie DiNorscio is larger than life—but his story is real. Lumet and cowriters T. J. Mancini and Robert J. McCrea use verbatim dialogue from trial transcripts to tell the amazing tale of a low-level New Jersey hood who decides to act as his own attorney in a massive Federal case against the Lucchese crime family. He sees himself as a stand-up comic, but the trial judge (well played by Ron Silver) tries to control his cut-up tendencies for the sake of courtroom decorum. Jackie Dee is a loud, big-hearted lug but he’s not stupid, and part of the fun in watching the movie is seeing how so-called smarter people underestimate him, and the power of his disarming candor.

Lumet shows us both sides of the case in and out of court, and populates the film with superior actors right down the line: Linus Roache as the government prosecutor, Peter Dinklage as the mob’s defense attorney, Alex Rocco as one of the mob elders, and Annabella Sciorra as Jackie’s estranged wife.

But the movie’s success hinges on Diesel, and he delivers. If you don’t believe me, it’s your loss.

37. FIRELIGHT

(1998)

Directed by William Nicholson

Screenplay by William Nicholson

Actors:

SOPHIE MARCEAU

STEPHEN DILLANE

DOMINIQUE BELCOURT

KEVIN ANDERSON

LIA WILLIAMS

JOSS ACKLAND

SALLY DEXTER

Movies used to be about storytelling, but nowadays they are more often about sensations; there’s a good reason many Hollywood hits are compared to thrill rides. But I don’t think there’s an audience in the world, regardless of age, that doesn’t respond to a good story.

From the silent-film era through the 1960s there were certain warhorses that were remade time and again, like Madame X, a story of mother love and sacrifice. Among its many imitators were Stella Dallas (filmed three times…so far) and a 1931 film called The Sin of Madelon Claudet that won Helen Hayes an Academy Award.

One doesn’t find that theme very often in modern cinema, but Firelight proves that it hasn’t lost its potency, if handled well. It probably helps that the story is set in 1838.

The beautiful Sophie Marceau (a French star best known to American audiences as Braveheart’s melancholy queen) is ideally cast as a troubled, and impoverished, Swiss woman who becomes the nineteenth-century equivalent of a surrogate mother. British sheep farmer Stephen Dillane’s wife lies in a coma and can’t provide him with an heir. Marceau agrees to accept payment for her services and then disappear, but after giving birth, cannot separate herself emotionally from her child. Seven years later she applies for—and wins—the job as the girl’s governess, unbeknownst to the master of the house.

Call it soap opera if you like, but this is a beautifully rendered story of passions, both repressed and unleashed. It was written by William Nicholson, best known as the playwright of the wonderful biographical drama about C. S. Lewis, Shadowlands, which he later adapted for the screen, earning an Oscar nomination in the process. (He later shared a nomination for the screenplay of Gladiator.) This marks his only directorial effort to date, which is surprising given the skill with which he brought this story to life. The film has a masterful look and feel. Nicholson