Find Me Guilty

2006 "Sometimes the best defense... is a wiseguy."
7| 2h5m| R| en| More Info
Released: 17 March 2006 Released
Producted By: One Race
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Synopsis

Based on the true story of Jack DiNorscio, a mobster who defended himself in court for what would be the longest mafia trial in U.S. history.

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Reviews

Tedfoldol everything you have heard about this movie is true.
Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
Allison Davies The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
Ginger Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.
Zulfikar Bhanji That film was just right. It depicts the U.S. Criminal justice as it was back then and as it is now. For me this is a 10/10. The end was the best part of the film. Jackie's love for the people around him really made him the centrally humble character that he is and really depicted the plight of The Italian Americans in that court room and arguably Italian Americans in general. The film is based around love thy neighbour and displaying the true strength and core of loyalty that could shake any institution's beliefs and morals for a positive and moral outcome. There wasn't really much Jackie asked for apart from love and the feeling of being accepted by the people around you for what you really are. Thankyou.
MBunge A great story and a greatish performance are largely for naught in Find Me Guilty. Director Sidney Lumet's rambling approach to his narrative and disconnected feel for his main character stop this movie from ever rising above the level of "eh". There are individual scenes and moments that are a great deal better than that. Lumet never manages to assemble them into anything of value and it often seems as though he doesn't want to. I could be wrong, but this whole motion picture felt like Lumet had no inkling of who Jackie DiNorscio was and why he was that way. He also appears to have been uncomfortable with portraying this mob story either too irreverently or with too much grit and grime. Find Me Guilty comes out weirdly tepid and uneven. It's not awful. It's just not very good.Jackie DiNorscio (Vin Diesel) was a New Jersey gangster who got swept up in the biggest and longest criminal trial in American history when the feds tried to take out an entire mob family in one fell swoop. Prosecutor Sean Kierney (Linus Roche) assembled a mountain of evidence that took almost two years to get through. Lead defense attorney Ben Klandis (Peter Dinklage) tried to get around that by painting it all as anti-Italian stereotypes. Mob boss Nick Calabrese (Alex Rocco) became a seething cauldron of anger under the pressure and Judge Finestein (Ron Silver) tried to keep the proceedings from falling apart. Complicating it all was Jackie's efforts at defending himself, which relied more on humor than the law and more on Jackie's absolute loyalty to his friends and his chosen life than anything like the truth.Vin Diesel is almost great as Jackie. I'm not sure why anyone should be surprised at that. You can tell the difference between a guy who can act and one who gets by on attitude and personality. Diesel can act. He's no Dustin Hoffman. He's not even Val Kilmer. But he can act. The only thing holding Diesel back here is that Lumet and company have given him an extremely binary character. There's joking, sentimental Jackie and then there's street thug Jackie who's never more than an inch away from violence. He switches back and forth between them like a blinking neon sign and Diesel is given no chance to play anything in the middle or find a whole that encompasses both. If, at the end of this movie, you can explain why Jackie is so different from every other mobster we see, you're much more observant than I am.Lumet is just as ineffectual when it comes to the trial. He uses actual court transcripts for some of the dialog, but it's almost as though he trapped himself by doing so. Lumet obviously decided that his story would be about Jackie and this triangle of people who orbited around him in court. The prosecutor, the lead defense attorney and the judge, however, are an uneasy fit. Only Linus Roche is given anything like an independent character to play but Lumet can't decide on what kind it should be. Sometimes he's the overweening heavy opposite Jackie. Sometimes he's the man fighting the good fight. Sometimes he's the tragic victim of the absurdities of the legal system. Dinklage and Silver don't have enough to do to vacillate like that. They're just props that stand there opposite Jackie and do what needs to be done to facilitate his scene.And while Lumet was obviously aware of the comedic ridiculousness of the trial, Jackie's behavior and how it all worked out, it sure appears as though he was hesitant to embrace it for fear of portraying violent criminals in too light a fashion. In a post-Goodfellas world, showing gangsters to be buffoonish scamps was a bridge too far.My ultimate impression is that Lumet, and the audience, would have been better served if he had tried to make a darkly sarcastic film about the trial itself with Jackie merely comic relief in the overall drama. Imagine making a movie about Watergate where the main character was G. Gordon Liddy. That's what Find Me Guilty is like, though probably a bit funnier. It's still not something I can recommend.
Frederick Smith If you were expecting another action adventure film with Vinnie Diesel, guess again. This film is one where Vin has to act, and I mean act. And he does it amazingly well. The plot is well laid out and sets a logical foundation from start to finish. While a failure at the box office, this film is one of the great underground sleepers everyone who is interested in the real history of the "Mafia" in the US should see. Vin portrays "Jackie Dee" DiNorscio, probably one of the last "Stand Up" guys in the mob, unwilling to sell out his friends and family to get a reduced sentence. In the courtroom, he is a fly in the ointment, and a pain in the judge's rear end. As his own attorney, he makes procedural and other mistakes the defense attorney's are uncomfortable with. While most of the other mobsters are okay with Jackie, Alex Rocco (as Nick Calabrese, Don of the Lucchese family) is brusque, rude, and downright condescending to him, accusing him of selling out for a deal. Throughout the trial, Vinnie remains solid, and is supported by Ben Klandis (played by Peter Dinklage). Dinklage gives an amazing performance as the dwarf attorney who is surprisingly adept at presenting his case. Ron Silver is prefect as the judge, showing only as much emotion as he needs, and trying to be fair in his rulings. Linus Roache shows us the firm, determined persona we were used to when he took over for Jack McCoy in the final seasons of Law and Order, and this was not his first time working with Vin. They were previously together in The Chronicles of Riddick. Annabella Sciorra and Alexa Palladino are also excellent in their roles as Jackie's wife and daughter. And Hat's Off to the casting department for presenting us with a list of Italian names not seen since the Godfather films. I guess they felt you had to be Italian to understand what was up at the time. Rated R for language and some brief but brutal violence, this may not be a film for the family, but it is definitely one for Vin fans and anyone who likes an unpretentious legal docudrama. Collectible? Depends on your taste.
itamarscomix Sidney Lumet remains, as he was, the master of the courtroom drama. But was Vin Diesel this good all along, or was it Lumet who dragged this performance out of him? Diesel delivers a character who's creepy, offensive, funny, moving and lovable.Find Me Guilty is not quite on the same level as 12 Angry Men, or the rest of Lumet's incredibly impressive filmography from the 50's, 60's and 70's, but it's compelling, entertaining and highly intelligent, and keeps the viewer in all the way through, thanks to a top notch script, and Diesel's wonderful performance. A courtroom drama this good, this entertaining and effective hasn't been seen since A Few Good Men.