Rating: 
Summary: Original and outspoken courtroom drama.
Review: This is a very subversive courtroom drama, taking swipes not only at the McCarthy witchhunts, but at the way the conformity of the 1950s ironically quenched the founding spirit of America. The casting of Gary Cooper is crucial - the former Western hero is now sick, mad, guilty, dangerous, demonised by a bureaucratic military. As a courtroom drama this is more intelligent than most, cleverly using the cliches for non-traditional ends. Preminger would go on to make THE great courtroom drama a few years later with 'Anatomy of a Murder', which had the benefit of a more entertaining script; but this one boasts a very disturbing portrait of browbeaten patriotism from Gary Cooper, and a rare Hollywood appearance from my childhood heroine, Samantha Stevens, known to mortals as Elizabeth Montgomery.
Rating:
Summary: Original and outspoken courtroom drama.
Review: This is a very subversive courtroom drama, taking swipes not only at the McCarthy witchhunts, but at the way the conformity of the 1950s ironically quenched the founding spirit of America. The casting of Gary Cooper is crucial - the former Western hero is now sick, mad, guilty, dangerous, demonised by a bureaucratic military. As a courtroom drama this is more intelligent than most, cleverly using the cliches for non-traditional ends. Preminger would go on to make THE great courtroom drama a few years later with 'Anatomy of a Murder', which had the benefit of a more entertaining script; but this one boasts a very disturbing portrait of browbeaten patriotism from Gary Cooper, and a rare Hollywood appearance from my childhood heroine, Samantha Stevens, known to mortals as Elizabeth Montgomery.
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