Utterly horrifying in every way, the mistakes of the past seem so obvious now with the benefit of hindsight and experience. Perhaps the saddest fact is that the cops, social workers and prosecutors in this case weren't actually bad people but genuinely believed that what they were doing was right, that the had uncovered monstrous child abuse, that children couldn't lie about such subjects and that they had to be subjected to coercive interviews in order to bring the truth to the surface. When they eventually began to study the evidence in detail they begin to develop that nagging doubt that they may have been mistaken but by then its almost impossible for them to admit their error in the face of public and media hysteria. I think the most revealing scene is when Mercedes Rheul's character talks about them trying to find one photograph, one drunken confession, one piece of corroborative evidence to back up the kid's increasingly fantastical and unreliable testimony. When they find nothing of the sort she desperately resorts to citing the lead suspect's reading of Playboy, interest in Pyramid power and unsatisfactory sexual encounter with an adult woman as proof of his guilt? When it emerges that the original accuser was mentally ill she still cannot give up the case, its gone so far there's no turning back now. That is perhaps the real tragedy, that of human nature.
James Woods really rules this film, he's playing the same sleazy lawyer we've seen him play so many times before, accustomed to defending guilty as sin drug dealers but this time finds himself unexpectedly on the side of the angels with genuinely innocent clients. It really is a tremendous tour do force from him.
James Woods really rules this film, he's playing the same sleazy lawyer we've seen him play so many times before, accustomed to defending guilty as sin drug dealers but this time finds himself unexpectedly on the side of the angels with genuinely innocent clients. It really is a tremendous tour do force from him.