gavin6942
Wealthy Sunny von Bülow (Glenn Close) lies brain-dead, husband Claus (Jeremy Irons) guilty of attempted murder; but he says he is innocent and hires Alan Dershowitz (Ron Silver) for his appeal.This film, based more or less on a true story, brings up one of those age-old legal ethics questions. Is morality and legality the same? Not at all. A person, no matter how strange or despicable, deserves the best defense. But if someone is found innocent, that does not automatically make them morally innocent. (And here we never quite know if Claus is an attempted killer or just does not care.) Jeremy Irons excels as always, and Glenn Close may have found her best role: being in a coma. She has never been good at anything else. And Ron Silver? Heck, he even made a soul-sucking loser like Dershowitz come across as a fascinating guy.
blanche-2
Ron Silver is Alan Dershowitz, the brilliant attorney who takes on Claus von Bulow's murder conviction on appeal in "Reversal of Fortune," a 1990 film starring Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons, beautifully directed by Barbet Schroeder. The film, of course, is based on the notorious von Bulow case. Sunny von Bulow was a socialite who became brain dead, and her husband, Claus, was accused of injecting her with insulin in an attempt to kill her. Sunny lived in a coma for nearly 28 years.Sunny (Close) herself narrates the story, beginning when Claus (Irons) calls Dershowitz and asks him to take his appeal. Dershowitz takes the case and involves his law students (including a very young Felicity Huffman) in it.It's all left pretty ambiguous - Sunny tells us that this is all we can know for now. Though von Bulow was found guilty of attempted murder at the first trial, Dershowitz won his appeal, and von Bulow was found not guilty at a second trial. After that, von Bulow moved to England. Since his daughter Cosima had taken his side in the case, Cosima's maternal grandmother disinherited her. In order to get her back in the will, von Bulow gave up any claim to Sunny's money.Glenn Close is excellent as the unhappy Sunny - a woman beset by health and weight problems as well as drug addiction and her husband's infidelity. But the backbone of the story is the character of Claus, and here Jeremy Irons does a fantastic job and deservedly received an Oscar for it. He is cold, unemotional, snobbish, and really makes you wonder if he did it or not.There are other good performances in the film, including that of Fisher Stevens as a supposed witness, the great Uta Hagen as Sunny's devoted maid, Christine Baranski as Claus' new girlfriend ("I told him, get the Jew," she tells Dershowitz), and Julie Hagerty as Alexandra Isles.After the first trial, I transcribed an interview with one of the jurors, and boy, did he think Claus did it. Despite the second verdict, "did he or didn't he" is a shadow that will always hang over Claus von Bulow.
Michael Neumann
The facts in the case of Claus von Bülow, convicted of murdering his wife but later acquitted in a headline-grabbing re-trial, are filtered through a European sense of irony into a portrait of icy upper-crust alienation and detachment. The film itself is no less aloof than its subject, favoring the legal technicalities of the case over its moral implications (the team of legal eagles defending the accused killer even wear nifty self-promotional t-shirts), and contrasting the upper class ice of von Bülow to the blue-collar fire of his lawyer (Ron Silver). Jeremy Irons gives a pitch-perfect reading of his character's cold, careless life of privilege, while Glenn Close plays the ill-fated Sunny von Bülow as a somewhat more pathetic variation of her psycho role in 'Fatal Attraction'. Her clumsy death-bed voice-over narration is an awkward attempt to balance the scales of justice, but in the end both the film and the legal case favor the defendant, with ace attorney Silver presenting his client as a public scapegoat for daring to fulfill every henpecked husband's darkest fantasy. In which case the film itself has to be regarded as the same browbeaten husband's perfect daydream of legal vindication.
namashi_1
Adapted from the 1985 book Reversal of Fortune: Inside the von Bülow Case, written by law professor Alan Dershowitz, 'Reversal Of Fortune' is a superb film! Barbet Schroeder directs this Murder-Mystery in an atmosphere that has potential and a lot to explain.It recounts the true story of the unexplained coma of socialite Sunny von Bülow, the subsequent attempted murder trial, and the eventual acquittal of her husband, Claus von Bülow, who had Dershowitz acting as his defense. As a cinematic experience, it's a must watch. The most freaky part is that it's a true incident.. the poor Sunny died few years back! Claus, on the other-hand is still alive.Moving on, coming to the high-points of this film: Schroeder's direction is fantastic. He makes every move neatly. Luciano Tovoli's Cinematography is outstanding! He captures each frame with style. Acting wise, Jeremy Irons is dignified in a role that won him the Academy-Award for Best Actor! Glenn Close is terrific. The legendary actress steals the show with a haunting performance. Ron Silver is hugely effective. Felicity Huffman, in a brief role, is perfect.This true story is a must watch... it's one cinematic experience! Thumbs Up!
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