A Masterpiece!

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Criminal Law is directed by Martin Campbell and written by Mark Kasdan. It stars Gary Oldman, Kevin Bacon, Tess Harper, Karen Young and Joe Don Baker. Music is by Jerry Goldsmith and cinematography by Philip Meheux.Boston attorney Ben Chase (Oldman) successfully defends Martin Thiel (Bacon) who is on trial for a sexually aggravated murder. But not long after Chase comes to realise Thiel's guilt and sets about correcting the wrong he helped orchestrate.If you have never seen a legal thriller before, or a serial killer based neo-noir for that matter, then Criminal Law might just poke its head above average waters. Unfortunately the well is quite full of such filmic exercises, and much better they are too!It's all so formulaic, where the potent promise of character disintegration into a hellish noir infused world is never fully realised. Instead we get characters whose actions are at times baffling, others who are under used or pointless scene fillers, and a screenplay cracking under the strain of a near two hour run time. Add in some poor accents for the setting, one of Goldsmith's worst scores and a damp squib finale, well you are struggling continually to get on board with it all. There's a high energy sex scene where the makers are clearly showing what their intentions were, in how stuck in a web of turmoil Chase is, but it just proves how muddled and rickety the narrative is.Positives come in the form of the visual look of the piece, Meheux (GoldenEye/Casino Royale) showing some nice stylish touches, most notably a dark underground set of scenes where slatted shadows operate as the noir staple of a character psychologically imprisoned, but these moments are fleeting and the story begs for more. Elsewhere, the killer's motives are at least interesting, adding in a controversial moral poser, and Elizabeth Shepherd as Thiel's mother is superbly cold and detached (pic needed more of her). But ultimately it's a disappointing film and not recommended as a must see. 5/10

Here's a rule to live by: Bad Foley artist, bad film.When you're watching the hunt for a psycho sex killer, you shouldn't be constantly distracted by the sound of footsteps. Obviously artificial footsteps. A lot of them: down marble courthouse hallways and up staircases. Or on a rainy sidewalk, where we hear the staccato tap of pumps with 3-inch heels, while the character was actually wearing Doc Martens.We movie buffs know about the Foley artist, who adds the realistic snaps and pops and squeaks and thereby enhances the soundtrack of "real life," but we shouldn't have to think about him DURING the film. Unfortunately, "Criminal Law" breaks this essential rule. So I have no one to blame but myself for watching it from beginning to end. I wanted to like it...but I couldn't.Gary Oldman plays a defense lawyer who helps a guilty man go free. When he discovers what he's done, Oldman spends the rest of the movie trying to get the killer. (The opening title is a quote about monster hunters becoming the monsters they hunt, an interesting idea that isn't really explored the way it could have been.) The idea that a savvy former prosecutor—now defending the criminals he used to send to jail—is surprised to find that his client (Kevin Bacon) is guilty is just one of the silly conceits of this silly movie. Another is a lawyer who's willing to chuck his whole career to make sure justice is done, especially when it's not at all necessary. Can't the police catch this guy? He's not exactly keeping a low profile.In the course of all this, we are treated to scenes of Gary Oldman in a wife-beater, whipping up a gourmet dinner for one in an immaculate architectural house; Gary Oldman in those painfully tiny '80s gym shorts, playing handball, or possibly squash; Gary Oldman naked, having truly embarrassing-to-watch sex with "Ellen" (a dreadful performance) interspersed with scenes of handball (or possibly squash); and generally a lot of Gary Oldman in a variety of GQ poses.I'm not sure who to blame for the surfeit of uncomfortable and unconvincing raw emotion in this movie. Is it the writer's fault? The director's? Both Oldman and Bacon are usually wonderful actors. But I can't remember a movie with this much male-to-male crying."Criminal Law" takes itself far too seriously, and we can't take it seriously enough. I was sure Oldman and Bacon were co-producers; they weren't—but it was that kind of movie.

Tangled in its superficiality, trying to be something more than just an ordinary thriller (and that's what this really is) about an psycho out of control "Criminal Law" wastes everything and everybody. Sadly, the movie couldn't warn us earlier, like 10 minutes from watching this and you would had the chance to know this might be an disaster and simply walk out of it. No, it goes quite well until the plot creates a mess bigger than the Everest and the K2 together (and director Martin Campbell, director of this, was in the latter in "Vertical Limit"), and worst, some of us want to climb it until the end but we can't. Why? Because we're not "trained" enough like the screenwriter from this flick. He and only he can decode this messy picture.And to think of how good this could be! Gary Oldman plays an lawyer who just made his client Thiel (Kevin Bacon) free from jail, accused of rape and murder of a woman. Everybody's happy until a new wave of crimes similar to the one thrown on Thiel start off again. But this isn't like "Just Cause", the guy won't say he isn't guilty, rather than that he's gonna commit more and more murders AND will rub on his lawyer face (that lousy privilege between client and defendant) his next moves. It's up to this man to find a way to stop this criminal. Pretty exciting, isn't it? "Criminal Law" becomes problematic when it decides to include random and uninteresting subplots about abortion, Thiel's family, and the lawyer's love interest and then it connects all of this parts together and mess it up real bad. It pretends to be real clever but it never succeeds. Take all that out and trade to saying something about ethics, difference between law and justice (they tried something about that but it wasn't enough), make a substantial dramatic film rather than 'to catch a serial killer' kind of thing and then we would have at least a decent movie, a relevant one. By all means, this is a poorly executed film that only wasted good actors in giving them bad scenes to perform with. Being the script the worst thing of it, we must be ashamed to testify Kevin Bacon giving one of his worst performances of all, completely on the automatic pilot and ridiculous playing the villain; Oldman has good moments when he's not trying to sustain so many different accents into an American role. And why on Earth do the script have to include an strange sex scene with him awkwardly interspersed with him playing squash? Ridiculous!. Hope that the money received by them was worth it because they could've done better than this. If you enjoy both actors I'll highly recommend "JFK" and "Murder in the First" (coincidentally in all of three films their characters never get along). "Criminal Law" I can't and won't suggest. A good idea and a wasted one. Big time! This is what happens when the hands get faster than the brain and the writer is not thinking of what's he doing. 5/10

Criminal Law is a different thrilling movie starring Kevin Bacon, Gary Oldman, Tess Harper, Karen Young, and Joe Don Baker! All of these actors and actresses performed very well especially Bacon and Oldman! Criminal Law is a very thrilling and is very interesting film. You never know what is going to happen next and the characters are very colorful in My opinion. The music by Jerry Goldsmith is very good and fits the film very well. Kevin Bacon plays a very good villain here and it something else how he is in this picture. Oldman has a fantastic performance! If you are looking for a great entertaining and thrilling crime film with a good cast, excellent acting, and many thrills then I strongly recommend this film that today!