The portentousness is often a disservice to the actors, embedded in dead air with roles too feebly written to get the ventilation going.

| Mar 1, 2024

It's Newman's performance itself that really makes this film work and helps it truly get close to Lumet's own '12 Angry Men'.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 1, 2024

It is difficult to remember a courtroom drama of such efficiency as The Verdict, nor better performances from Newman.

| Mar 24, 2023

Paul Newman has the role of his later career. He uses none of his blue-eyed charm, and scarcely ever smiles except while telling bar jokes. He IS the bruised Frank Galvin, and you feel for him with every shot of Irish whiskey and every legal defeat.

| Nov 12, 2018

This is realistic American film acting at its veristic/imaginative best.

| Jan 8, 2018

This is as good a role as Mr. Newman has ever had, and as shrewd and substantial a performance as he has ever given, although it may not be his most entirely credible.

| Jul 6, 2010

There are many fine performances and sensitive moral issues contained in The Verdict but somehow that isn't enough to make it the compelling film it should be.

| Jun 30, 2008

Sidney Lumet's direction, like David Mamet's patchy script, may not be quite good enough to justify the Rembrandt-like cinematography of Edward Pisoni and the brooding mood of self-importance, but it's good direction nonetheless.

| Jun 30, 2008

The first courtroom drama in years to recapture the brilliance of the form.

| Jan 26, 2006

The performances, the dialogue and the plot all work together like a rare machine.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Oct 23, 2004

Overrated potboiler with preposterously innacurate courtroom scenes. But Newman is great.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 20, 2003