Jagged Edge (1985)

Directed by Richard Marquand. Starring Glenn Close, Jeff Bridges, Peter Coyote, Robert Loggia, Louis Giambalvo, John Dehner, Marshall Colt, Karen Austin, Gus Boyd, Leigh Taylor-Young, William Allen Young, Lance Henriksen. [R]

Slick but preposterous legal thriller that finds accused wife murderer Bridges being defended by a former prosecutor (Close) who not only believes that he’s innocent, but almost immediately falls in love with him! Joe Eszterhas’ script piles on the twists and fake-outs to the point of absurdity, and shuffles in a feckless undercurrent of protagonist guilt over a former case to weak returns (the cutaway during the false courtroom climax to a suicide victim’s mother sitting in the stands should be held in contempt); nevertheless, it facilitates illogically free-flowing emotions with cool efficiency, and is probably the hack writer’s most accomplished screenplay! Bridges plays it close to the vest and is appropriately unreadable, while old pro Loggia finds cranky and profane warmth in the stock characterization of a grizzled P.I. in the defense counsel’s employ, but it’s Close who commands the affair with the sort of hard-fought empathy and studied errancy that lets her periodically break free from the power-tool precision of all the manipulation on hand. The rushed “real ending” is a letdown (and utterly predictable). Features a flood of continuity gaffes, but careful observation of a movie like this defeats its purpose, so spotting them almost becomes part of the fun. John Barry provides the curiously incongruous musical score. The 1989 Burt Reynolds/Theresa Russell thriller Physical Evidence was initially conceived as a sequel to this film before getting re-written into an unrelated standalone.

64/100