Incannerax What a waste of my time!!!
Ketrivie It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.
Matho The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.
Scotty Burke It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review
Leftbanker Spoiler Alert: The crime is the least interesting thing about this story. I wish they would have simply forgotten about the murder and just focus on the other areas. The reason I'm watching this British series is because it has been redone on HBO in the States. Criminal Justice (The British The Night of) is a decent series. As an American I have a hell of a time with some of the accents and the lawyer guy (or whatever the hell he is) mumbles a lot and he is very difficult to understand at times. For such a small country they have a lot of messed up accents. If this is an accurate portrayal of the British court system then theirs is a lot more lacking than what we have in America. They just go back and forth between prosecution and defense instead of giving the prosecution case first and then the defense with witnesses called in some sort or order.I really wish they hadn't gone the route of a whodunit but they did and it was pretty stupid. I just didn't care by the end if he had killed her or not. I think it would have been much better if we never really knew who did it and the kid was i for a life in the can.
Maui3 I am a woman.And I, like another reviewer here, found the plot to be very stereo-typical and patronizing to most of the men portrayed in it. The only man not stereotypical in my view is Dr. Rose who is portrayed as weak and undecided which is patronizing. The women, on the contrary, are portrayed as strong, opinionated or misunderstood victims.This was written by a man. A man who is purportedly an ex-barrister. So is he right?Well, apparently much of the legal details of this production are muddled. So much so, that it is a point of contention with some. Therefore, is one really suppose to just "suspend belief" because it's a drama? Moreover, should one derive a true premise from it and then make assumptions based on a dramatic interpretation?Also, five night episodic treatment left it tedious and slow. Better if it had run three nights.It certainly gets one talking, but if anything, the greatest part of Criminal Justice was the performances. Maxine Peake, Matthew Macfadyen and Sophie Okonedo were brilliant.And, brilliant acting can make you believe anything!
Angelus2 This is a good strong drama that sticks out a class above the rest; it is based on the justice system and shows a gritty world of 'winning'. What Lawyers are willing to do in order to free their client, distort evidence, trick witnesses and so on. It is beautifully shot, written and acted,the actors are perfect for the roles that they are given, everyone excels and no one is a weak link. The character Ben is very lovable he is innocent and naive; it is a sheer pain seeing him in prison and the predators that lurk. Characters like Hooch, Stone are played fantastically providing Ben advice and comfort in the youngsters time of need.While Freddie Graham is just plain scary...He doesn't even need to speak to send shivers down your back; the character at first seems to be the anti-hero but as the episodes go on it reveals his true motives, the only thing that I didn't like was the ending; It had no real closure with the character Ben.... But nonetheless a great show.
jc-osms Engrossing and involving, if highly fictional BBC drama shown over five consecutive nights, highlighting, or should that be low-lighting the British criminal justice system, effectively putting in the dock for viewers' consideration the police force, legal system and prison office, all of whom, on the "evidence" here, are all found wanting. The programme effectively combines three main narrative strands around these institutions of modern society, from the murder incident itself and the police detective (defective?) work alongside it, the trial process set at length in a court of law and perhaps most effectively the dehumanising incarceration process within the confines of prison. Some bits work better than others. The basic murder mystery is handled somewhat freely and brought to a fairly undramatic conclusion, although it's main purpose I think was likely to be in effectively highlighting the grey area of collusion which purportedly exists between lawman and lawbreaker, here personified by Bill Paterson's career cop being surprisingly in cahoots with the Mr Big, played by David Harewood in prison. I also found the depiction of the legal system somewhat hackneyed with characters and situations just too stereotyped and really more at home in the mediocre BBC legal soap opera "New Street Law" from last year. Examples of this are the young female junior barrister getting involved (albeit lightly) with the young defendant and her barnstorming attempt to pin the murder on the dead girl's father, without even checking if he had an alibi (as of course he did). What will stay in the memory most however are the scenes in prison where the vilification of the prison service is damned to hell. There are no upholders of the law in the jail, the prison officers invariably displayed as weak, conniving or both. I really can't or maybe don't want to believe things are that bad in UK prisons with a Freddie Graham character running the place as his own fiefdom. That said, it made for taut drama, with many memorable if shocking scenes of rampant moral corruption inside. The acting is mostly very good, Pete Postlethwaite unsurprisingly, given his pedigree, taking the honours with a completely credible performance as Hooch, the hard-bitten lifer who's learned to adapt and survive but ultimately at the expense of his own conscience, which he redeems but pays for in full at the end. There are other excellent turns too, principally by Con O'Neill as the Colombo-type gumshoe who plays the situation for all he can get, Bill Patterson as the too-long-in-the-tooth detective who now blurs the line between right and wrong and Lesley Duncan as the experienced cynical senior barrister who rides roughshod over her client's feelings to get the easiest and quickest result for her. Special mention must go though to Ben Whilshaw as the innocent, out-for-a-good-time youngster who is drawn into a latter-day Kafka-ish nightmare who emerges at the end physically intact but obviously deeply affected by his horrific experiences and who in the last scene now feels outcast from the friendly football kick-about in which he participated in the opening scenes. He has a face reminiscent of John Lynch in "Cal" or David Bradley in "Kes", and portrays what must have been a gruelling role with conviction and realism. On the whole an excellent thought-provoking drama, let down only slightly by its probably necessary concessions to TV drama with perhaps more cliffhangers than would probably be the case with more typical, I would imagine, hum-drum real-life criminal cases. One caveat - would the BBC please stop its infuriating habit of trailing the succeeding programme at the end of the current programme. It's unnecessary and insulting to viewers' intelligence, especially in this instance when the programme was shown over successive nights.
