The running time is 2 hrs. 9 mins..
Truth be told, I had never even heard of The Verdict before it came in the same mailing as The Hustler and with 11 HD DVDs to review and plenty of other work on my plate I never thought I would get to it, but it kept calling out to me. When a studio makes an effort to release a title from a classic actor you can pretty much count on the first wave being the better of the bunch so I gave in one late night, put on a pot of coffee and stayed up way too late... but it was worth it... at least once.
After watching The Hustler in which Newman was 36-years-old the first thing I noticed was the bit of grey hair he was sporting, but after an extremely interesting, yet quiet, opening scene featuring Newman as Galvin playing a game of pinball I was quickly intrigued. Galvin is one step shy of being completely washed up, he's a lawyer with a losing record and he is just one turn away from going over the edge and turning completely to the bottle and living on the streets. Luckily, there is that one last case that could turn it all around and he knows it, but it is a matter of what direction should he take it?
Given a case that should probably just be plea-bargained and settled before it ever hits the courts Galvin turns down an offer of $250,000 outside of the clients' wishes in an act of selfishness in an effort to prove he isn't as washed up as everyone says he is. However, once the chips fall he realizes he is fighting an uphill battle as everyone and everything seems to be against him.
Standing out in The Verdict other than Newman is a 36-year-old Charlotte Rampling who looked a hell of a lot like Rachel Weisz in her younger years and now that I look at her I can still see a little bit of it.
On a special feature level, much like the new release of The Hustler, all the featurettes weave themselves together and while they aren't that bad they do get a little old once you are done with them. The real story you are going to continue to hear as you listen to each feature is how David Mamet's first draft of the script ended without an actual verdict. After some cajoling and rewriting Mamet ultimately added a verdict and I can't help but wonder how the movie would have been affected without an actual result to the trial. Unfortunately I now know and imagining is a bit tough to do. There is also an audio commentary with Sidney Lumet and Paul Newman, but you are going to be hard pressed to hear Newman if you bounce around this commentary and don't listen to it all the way through, he hardly speaks.
Although there are some new features, the real meat here is the movie itself and the rest isn't really worth talking about outside of that one Mamet bit I mentioned in the previous paragraph. This isn't a perfect film, but if you are a Newman fan it is definitely worth a look, but I can't recommend you run out and buy it.