Barry Newman Commands the Courtroom with Pure Panache

DIRECTED BY SIDNEY J. FURIE/1970

BLU-RAY STREET DATE: MAY 21, 2024/KL STUDIO CLASSICS 

Tony Petrocelli may not be a great lawyer, but he played one on TV.  That is to say, his 1970 big-screen outing (now on Blu-ray from KL Studio Classics; this is the review!) may’ve been wrongfully declared guilty, but he won two television seasons on appeal.  That series, Petrocelli, ran from 1974 to 1976 on NBC, and even managed to retain lead actor Barry Newman in the title role.  But the character’s debut movie, director Sidney J. Furie’s The Lawyer, was never intended to be a large-scale pilot.

Truth be told, Petrocelli isn’t a great lawyer, whether on TV or the movie screen.  He spends much of the film trying to dig himself and his client out of a prison verdict he fails to prevent. The entirety of The Lawyer takes place in his current rural hometown, somewhere in the American southwest.  Despite being Harvard educated, there’ve been setbacks for ol’ Petrocelli, as he’s now reduced to dashing around the vast desert road in his small truck, often getting pulled over and/or parking tickets.  The guy exudes confidence both legitimate and feigned yet is always convincing.  We get the impression he’s not a bad lawyer by any stretch, even if he’s also something of a huckster.  (Twice he reminds his small, overworked staff, “Remember, you’re not getting paid for this work.  But that’s what makes it so valuable!”)  Barry Newman thoroughly owns this great role.

While The Lawyer feels overlong at 120 minutes and isn’t always as engaging as it needs to be, it edges out many a similarly themed legal thriller by being a character piece first and a procedural second.  As directed by Sidney J. Furie, the film’s tone is deceptively complex.  Furie, with the very necessary able assists by his great cast of lesser knowns, walks the tightrope of flippant humor and brutal murder all the way to the end.  The music is straight out of Love, American Style; the story (Petrocelli goes to the mat to defend a handsome young physician who’s being tried for murdering his wife in bed) is based on the Dr. Sam Sheppard case, which was defended by F. Lee Bailey (and is said to have inspired the TV series The Fugitive).  The dialogue is appealingly cutting but not false; the Rashomon-esque crime flashbacks are bluntly handled.

This KL Studio Classics Blu-ray release of The Lawyer gets surprisingly prestigious treatment for a relatively obscure film.  This is no doubt thanks to film historian/filmmaker Daniel Kremer, who literally wrote the book on Sidney J. Furie (Sidney J. Furie: Life and Films).  The guy knows him- literally.  The two semi-recent (but not shot for this release) video interviews with the film’s leads, the late Barry Newman (his interview running nearly twenty-two minutes) and Diana Muldaur (hers running nearly eleven minutes with part of that supplemented with a promotional video for Furie’s unreleased docudrama Finding Hannah, for which she reteamed with Newman) were conducted by Kremer, and he’s on the disc’s audio commentary.

The audio commentary is a rich one, full of plenty of facts and informed opinions courtesy of Kremer and film director Paul Lynch (who directed an episode of Petrocelli back in the day).  Along the way, archival audio interview excerpts between Kremer and Furie are heard.  The Lawyer is covered and covered well on the track, as is Furie’s themes and techniques as a reluctant auteur.  The filmmaker’s triumphs (The Ipcress File;The Appaloosa) as well as his later lesser works (a particularly interesting take on the Rodney Dangerfield comedy Ladybugs is heard) are discussed, as well as various fascinating tangents on cinematography and comedy.  It’s absolutely worth a hearing.

The film looks remarkable here, thanks to the 2021 HD Master (undertaken by the film’s studio, Paramount Pictures) of a 4K Scan of the 35mm Original Camera Negative.  That’s some real unexpected love for a Lawyer.  The film may’ve been sentenced to movie prison following its initial (they say delayed) 1970 release but has won on appeal time and time again.  With this handsome Blu-ray (with terrific new artwork by Vince Evans), the verdict once again comes down on the side of Petrocelli.