david mamet has long been my favorite screenwriter and director .
with his distinctive , more often than not ingenious dialogue , and his laid back style of direction nearly all of his movies are absolutely irresistible .
some of them tend to be thickly layered , deceptive productions that require the audience to look at the film in a less superficial manner than the plot seems to require in order to discern its concealed message , or sometimes even a concealed storyline .
and although the real plot in his new project the winslow boy is slightly more conspicuous than in some of his other endeavors , it is still a brilliantly complex , consistently riveting motion picture about honor , about sacrifice , and about the difference between what is commonly known as justice and what is right .
oh , and it 's rated g .
incidentally , this is the first time that mamet has decided to adapt someone else 's work ; namely a play by terrence rattigan , set in the 19th century .
he casts nigel hawthorne in the lead role as arthur winslow , a rich , aging man who finds out that his 14 year old son ronnie has been kicked out of the naval academy for allegedly stealing a 5 shilling postal note .
"
did you do it ?
"
he asks his boy .
"
no father , i did n't , " ronnie answers .
that 's enough for arthur , who , with his oldest daughter ( rebecca pidgeon ) , immediately starts a crusade to bring his son 's case to court .
they enlist the help of sir robert morton , a notorious attorney to help them achieve that formidably daunting task .
it all seems fairly frivolous , and no matter how you look at it , the winslow case is not the trial of the century .
but arthur is determined to keep his family 's word clean and he is willing to go quite far to make sure of that .
soon enough , sir robert morton along with the rest of the country becomes equally wrapped up in the proceedings .
so do we .
all david mamet does for the script is tighten and hone the dialogue , but his style is still fairly apparent .
the characters still talk in his trademark staccatto lines and there is still tension present in conversations that no ordinary writer would be able to make tense .
but this is not mamet 's norm , and it 's refreshing to see mamet deviate from his world of crooks , gangsters as con men , wonderful as those films were .
nigel hawthorne 's performance is nearly flawless .
his delivery is that of a dignified yet not pompous man who seems to be getting beaten at his own game .
we pity the man , but we also like him .
rebecca pidgeon , david mamet 's wife , who gave a fairly awful performance in the spanish prisoner is at the top of her game here as arthur 's oldest daughter , a flailing feminist who gives her all to the winslow case as a way for making up for her lack of success in the women 's suffrage movement .
the winslow boy is a wonderful movie that avoids cliches such as a seemingly inevitable courtroom scene and shoots higher -- it wants to make a real impact rather than a phony one .
be honest : did you feel anything profound at or after the courtroom scenes in films like a time to kill ? if you wanted to but did n't ,
this is a movie for you .
it is the epitome of subtlety :
it 's powerful without being too emotional , sad without even trying to be depressing .
david mamet can churn out some great scripts , but in this movie he proves to those who ever doubted it once and for all that
he is a hell of a director too .
he is almost a national treasure .
his films deserve their own genre . ?
1999 eugene novikov&#137 ;
is nearly flawless . his delivery is that of a dignified yet not pompous man a brilliantly complex , consistently riveting he is a hell of a director too it 's powerful without being too emotional , sad without even trying to be depressing is at the top of her game here distinctive , more often than not ingenious dialogue , and his laid back style of direction nearly all of his movies are absolutely irresistible a wonderful movie that avoids cliches this is a movie for you it 's refreshing has long been my favorite his films deserve their own genre shoots higher