Primal Fear was adapted from William Diehl‘s like-named bestselling novel and, like in many literary adaptations, its screenplay is a hit-and-miss affair. Vail, of all people: the flamboyant ADA-turned-private-practitioner, the star attorney not shying away from even the shadiest client, to whom TV and magazine cover interviews are as second nature as his courtroom appearances, and who cynically quotes as his mottos a professor’s maxims on his first day in law school: “From this day forward, if your mother says she loves you, get a second opinion.” And: “If you want justice, go to a whorehouse. Nobody, that is, except Aaron’s defense attorney Martin Vail (Richard Gere). Rushman friend Shaughnessy (John Mahoney) personally to try the case, with the express mandate to obtain a death penalty conviction. Besides, who is going to believe him anyway – a stuttering, uneducated boy from rural Kentucky who was found begging by the powerful clergyman, taken in as an altar boy and made to sing in his choir – that he was present when the murder was committed but can’t remember a single thing because he blacked out? Nobody surely not the police and ADA Janet Venable (Laura Linney), assigned by D.A.
Or does it?Ĭertainly it doesn’t help that Aaron was caught running from the crime scene, covered in blood, and with the archbishop’s ring in his pocket. “Fui bailar no meu batel além do mar cruel,” sings fadista Dulce Pontes in this movie’s dramatic title song Canção do Mar: “I went dancing in my little boat, beyond the cruel sea.” And it must be just like a nutshell-sized boat dancing on a stormy ocean’s waves that nineteen-year-old Aaron Stampler (Edward Norton) feels after his arrest for the savage murder of Chicago’s saintly Archbishop Rushman.
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