Bad Message
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pacman-31 — 19 years ago(October 27, 2006 01:15 PM)
They were not on trial for all the crimes they obviously committed, they were on trial for consipiracy (the 'C' in the RICO act) so the prosecution had to show that they were all connected. That's whey they kept trying to link Jack and all the others guys' crimes to Nick Calabrazi to prove they are a crime family. If they were all on charge for specific crimes, when Jackie says "Have I ever denied using Cocaine" (which is actual dialogue from the real court case) they would have abviosly found him guilty then right? The whole point with Jackie saying how much he loved the guys, was to show that he loved them because he grew up with them and thats why they always hang out, not because they are conspiring to commit crimes. More evidence of this is when Jackie holds up the photo in the end and says the three kids were "Conspiring to buy ice cream." He is trying to show that they all grew up to together and are basically family. Just because one member of a family is guilty of a crime, does not mean they are all guilty of a crime and that is EXACTLY what the prosecution had to prove. Your statement may be one of the most ignorant concatination of words I have ever seen.
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vannalee-shop — 19 years ago(November 27, 2006 02:54 PM)
I liked this movie. It was a bit of a farce. The jazzy score kept things pretty light. Not showing photos of dead people made it a lot easier to avoid focusing on the countless victims of the mobsters.
If there is a message to be made about the justice system, perhaps it's that prosecutors should focus more on evidence than on trying to make history and get into the record books with maximum exhibits, defendants, witnesses and trial lengths. The prosecutors came off as arrogant for overfiling indictments. If I was a juror on this case, I would have resented being imposed upon for this length of time, not to mention the bombardment of less than damning evidence from which I was supposed to conclude that someone must have done something.
They should have tried these defendants a few at a time for specific violations, which would have been more feasable under state laws than the federal RICO statute. But to do this, they would have needed seized evidence and truthful witnesses who actually saw crimes in progress or heard confessions, as opposed to those shown in the film who couldn't credibly connect the dots all the way to the top. The prosecutors just looked greedy. -
gormly — 19 years ago(December 04, 2006 05:47 PM)
"If I was a juror on this case, I would have resented"
would it have swayed your verdict as well?
If so that shows exactly that people like YOU (99.9% of us) are essentially what is wrong with our justice system.
We get an impression and no matter what.. it colors our views. -
ssbfz2 — 19 years ago(December 26, 2006 01:37 PM)
While they were actually on trial for conspiracy, the C in RICO actually stands for "Corrupt". RICO is the Racketeering In Corrupt Organizations Act. I don't know why the movie made the mistake of claiming that the C meant conspiracy, but it doesn't. I am not only a mob enthusiast, but also a law student. Your statement may be one of the most ignorant concatination of words I have ever seen.
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kaustin-9 — 19 years ago(February 02, 2007 06:17 AM)
Eddie The Head, the poster meant "concatenation". Only one letter was incorrect. Dictionary.com says the word means "the state of being linked together as in a chain; union in a linked series". When you don't know a word, look it up.
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gpgirard — 18 years ago(June 20, 2007 08:31 PM)
LOL. 10 seconds on Google would have given you the correct explanation of the acronym, RICO. Using "big words" like concatenation impresses nobody, particularly when they are spelled incorrectly. Moreover, if you're referring to the post by the author with Pac Man and his name, in so far as he goes, the gist of his information is essentially correct. The law is well settled that the gravamen of a conspiracy charge is the agreement, not the act. You really should wait until you finish law school, pass the bar, and practice some law before rendering legal opinions instead of relying on a spurious authority as a "law student."
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frogca — 16 years ago(May 18, 2009 07:09 PM)
While they were actually on trial for conspiracy, the C in RICO actually stands for "Corrupt". RICO is the Racketeering In Corrupt Organizations Act. I don't know why the movie made the mistake of claiming that the C meant conspiracy
Sure, but a Corrupt Organization is committing conspiracy people working together for a criminal purpose. The two C's are intertwined, and I take it that the lawyer (Klandis) was using poetic licence when he described it that way. -
StrangledPalooka — 18 years ago(April 12, 2007 11:22 AM)
If they were all on charge for specific crimes, when Jackie says "Have I ever denied using Cocaine" (which is actual dialogue from the real court case) they would have abviosly found him guilty then right?
Umno. He'd already been convicted of that, remember? Why would he deny something for which he was already in prison? -
gpgirard — 18 years ago(June 20, 2007 08:12 PM)
Actually, RICO stands for Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. The Act is very complex and subject to abuse in the criminal context on the part of the government and prosecuting attorneys. It can also be invoked in civil cases between private parties in disputes over money. For example, in the recent sex abuse scandals involving the Catholic Church, RICO actions were brought.
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Ant_Lan — 18 years ago(August 23, 2007 08:13 PM)
Peter Dinklage's closing argument (by the way, that guy has such a voice and presence, I'm gonna make a point of seeing "The Station Agent" and anything esle he's done!) pretty much sums up what happened.
This trial took something like two years. Take a moment to think back on each month, week and day of your life for the last two years, and imagine those being focused on one and only one thing: a trial.
The prosecutor became the Persecutor
, Ben Klandis argues at the end of those two years. In my view, that's what stuck with the jury - the guy didn't even care anymore why he was putting these people on trial, he just wanted to win at any cost.
I'm far from a legal expert, but I was thrown back to one time where I had to testify in court - the prosecutor had three cases to argue in the same day, and didn't really seem to care that much about who he was trying to put away. I felt like he had a criminal in front of him, and he had to put him away, period. In the movie, Kierney had that motivation PLUS he seemed obsessed about them. I honestly don't know what my final vote would've been if sitting on that jury, knowing, as someone said in this thread, that you have to go beyond a reasonable doubt to convict.
-DAVE S'T'UN TUEUR!
-DAVE S'T'UNE TERREUR!
-Dave y magan. -
strangenoise — 17 years ago(March 10, 2009 03:22 PM)
You might also argue that the movie not is a twisted mirror of a legal and judicial system, but that it's a mirror of a twisted legal and judicial system. Most of the points that are argued in the trial scenes speak against 'the system': racial profiling, FBI trading drugs for confessions, lawyer earning thousands even before the process starts etc. And though the dialogue is taken up from the real court records, one should always keep in mind that it's dramatized. The whole movie is built around DiNorscio and I can perfectly see the point in this: DiNorscio is the one honest character here, a naive idealistic believer in love and honour, likeable in its own ways (a little too macho, not all his jokes hit their goal but still in the parameters). His most intense scene is the meeting with his cousin on the witness stand. One could believe that he did it all just to talk to him and set things straight or at least understand. Lumet draws only two sympathetic characters here: his protagonist and Ben Klandis (great actor, check In Bruges), the (let's be honest on this) dwarf, an underdog in his own ways and it's not surprising that these two kinda band together. We can like DiNorscio (clever narrative move: he's never given to us as a murderer or something on the unecessary-violence scale) and dislike Calabrese, we can wonder why our 'good guy' gets kicked and the bad guys (remember the decadent yacht scene) get away. And as already mentioned before, this is a 'cute' movie, not the right-in-your-face social commentary one might expect, it's farcical and I think (as I also judge from the reactions in this board) it brought its message home: funny, nice but almost a little disturbing.
And btw: I think Diesel did a good job here, not Academy Award, but it is solid acting (though I might have been wise to hide his face in the scene after his mother's death, something tells he is not good with the crying scenes) -
Behelit — 11 years ago(May 12, 2014 07:31 AM)
Ben Klandis (great actor, check In Bruges), the (let's be honest on this) dwarf
Jordan Prentice was that actor in the movie
In Bruges
, not Peter Dinklage. Yeah seems like Dinklage put such an impression on you that you managed to mistake him for another actor. But hey who cares right? After all he's a "dwarf" as you said in your mighty honesty.
