Legal Eagles (1986)

Synopsis: It’s a courtroom drama that features everything except, um…courtroom drama.

Blurb From the VHS Jacket: “Robert Redford and Debra Winger star in this sophisticated comedy thriller about an art fraud and murder, with Redford as a hard-nosed assistant district attorney and Winger as an imaginative defense attorney who combine their talents to defend Daryl Hannah, a spacey ‘performance artist’ who is accused of theft and murder.” [Wow...did the MCA Universal marketing department really feel the need to use the word “murder” twice in the same sentence?]

What Did I Learn?: If you’re an experienced trial lawyer and you find yourself defending a woman who everyone believes to be guilty, your best strategy is to, um… use your opening statement to tell the jury you think her entire story is bullshit?! WTF?

You Might Like This Movie If: You figure the movie is probably about this guy.

Really?: 1) See What Did I Learn? 2) So wait…the villains want to secretly sell a bunch of paintings that were supposedly destroyed in a fire 18 years earlier? Wouldn’t that open them up to criminal fraud charges? 3) So, is the Tait Art Gallery constructed from oily rags? It’s funny how the building gets engulfed in flames so quickly, and it has neither smoke alarms nor a sprinkler system. 4) Can a forklift actually crash through a steel garage door? 5) I had a hard time believing Laura Kelly (Debra Winger) would hire Logan (Robert Redford) for Chelsea’s (Daryl Hannah) defense team after he was caught sleeping with her and he became a public laughingstock. 6) Hold on – Logan and Kelly deliver one of the worst opening statements in the history of trial movies, and then they solve the crime over the weekend with a little detective work? Where’s the courtroom action? 7) So, in the course of this movie, Redford bangs one woman 19 years his junior, and another woman 24 years younger...hey, that shit happens all the time.

Rating: It’s hard to give Legal Eagles anything but a mixed review. On the one hand, Robert Redford and Debra Winger enjoy some great chemistry, and the film is a fun-but-forgettable romantic comedy. Unfortunately, the plot is convoluted bullshit, and the movie is so jam-packed with explosions, fires, shoot-outs and pretentious performance art that it never gets a chance to develop that chemistry. Legal Eagles isn’t one of Ivan Reitman’s better efforts. 6/10 stars.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091396/?ref_=sr_1