SnoopyStyle Legendary record producer Phil Spector (Al Pacino) is accused of murdering Lana Clarkson. He insists that she killed herself. His defense attorney Bruce Cutler (Jeffrey Tambor) hires consultant Linda Kenney Baden (Helen Mirren) to help. The evidence is circumstantial but the most damning is probably Spector himself.With David Mamet, Al Pacino, and Helen Mirren, I had greater hopes. Sure it's just a TV movie but HBO likes to think of themselves as more than TV. It's mostly about the behind the scenes of the defense during the trial as they cobble the evidence together. Without both sides, the movie feels like it's missing something. Pacino is throwing a lot into his performance. Mirren is solid. The most interesting part for me is the opening text of NOT based on a true story. After that, some of the inside baseball looked interesting. The case isn't that complicated. I come away with the feeling that this is only the most superficial of a look inside of Spector's mind.

user-960-225284 The acting is excellent but why these actors made this worthless film is beyond me. Spector himself is a sicko character in real life and Pacino shows Spector for what he is but this film just sucks. The biggest moments (and it was expected) is when the topic of the Beatles comes up. Invoking his relationship with the Beatles as if he was of importance in their career, he wasn't. He was just another loony they met along the long winding road. The soundtrack is expected, the historical references are expected but would have to be verified as it appears some poetic license was used here and all the references are from Phil's demented memory of what might have happened. All in all it's a film about an uninteresting character that got away with years of indulging his own ego until it caught with him, unfortunately at the expense of a young woman's life. The film will make you happy the Phil Spector is rotting in a cell and hopefully being treated like the scum that he is.If you need to puke this is the film for you....

jc-osms I came to this HBO production with some trepidation being aware that representatives of both the victim and the convicted had poured scorn on this production, but with a top cast and being written and directed by David Mamet, I had to watch."Had to watch" in fact probably sums up my feelings about the movie. Spector to my mind was undoubtedly a production genius who had made some of the best records of the 60's - "Be My Baby", "You've Lost That Lovin Feeling" and "River Deep Mountain High" to name but three, not to mention his production duties for the Beatles, group and solo, but there's little doubt that he seemed to possess at the very least an eccentric and at most a control-freak mentality which, given his predilection for guns, ended up with the death of a woman named Lana Clarkson at his mansion retreat by a gunshot through the mouth.I remember when the story broke and reading about the circumstances of her death thinking that Spector had to be guilty but when his replacement defence attorney Linda Kersey (Helen Mirren) picks up the case she finds aspects of the evidence which when skilfully presented at trial, at least seem to bring in some doubt over his guilt. The film takes us up to the end of the inconclusive first trial at which point Kersey finally surrenders to the pneumonia assailing her all through the movie and we learn through a closing credit sub-title that in her enforced absence, Spector, as we know of course, was convicted and sentenced accordingly.However, the film is less concerned about the drama of the traditionally climactic courtroom scene than it is about examining the fragile state of mind of the crazed Spector and the efforts of Kersey to get through to him and find a way to defend him. That this seems to detract from considerations of the poor victim is a valid criticism, but as film entertainment, it's the scenes between Pacino and Mirren which undoubtedly work best.For once, Pacino's acting, which has been in over-the-top self-caricature mode since "Scent Of A Woman", is actually suited to the mass of eccentricity that is Spector and he gives a compelling performance of this undoubtedly gifted but strange man with his sense of self-importance, mood-swings and frankly bizarre choice of wigs depending on his mood. Subtle it isn't but I was ultimately convinced by his performance as I gradually witnessed less Pacino and more Spector in his characterisation.Mirren has to convey dogged determination combined with a legal lucidity as she tries to prise out a defence for her client, all the time struggling against her advancing illness and all this she does excellently. Arguably the skill of her acting steals some of Pacino's limelight but for me helps to ground the film more in reality, ultimately to its benefit.The movie is however mis-titled, as viewers might be misled into thinking this was a bio- pic of some kind, rather than focusing purely on his murder trial. That carp apart, I was thoroughly engrossed by this well-acted, written and directed study of madness of a musical great and to a lesser degree, of the American legal system at work.

Girish Gowda Record producer Phil Spector (Al Pacino) hires Bruce Cutler (Jeffrey Tambor) to defend him when he's accused of murder. Cutler persuades Linda Kenney Baden (Helen Mirren) to advise him. While the prosecution's story is contradicted by facts in the case, there is convincing circumstantial evidence against Spector, not the least of which is his appearance. As Baden gradually takes over the defense, even as she is ill with pneumonia, she must find a way to introduce ballistic evidence in a dramatic enough fashion to plant doubt in the jury's mind. Calling Specter to testify may be the only way to stage the evidence. She coaches him and rehearses him: can he (and she) pull it off? Directed by David Mamet, this work is based on a real-life incident, but it comes with a disclaimer that its just a fictional tale. If anybody doesn't know about these people beforehand, then don't expect the movie to provide much more than surface level, superficial insight into the lives of these characters. Al Pacino, Helen Mirren and the rest of the highly qualified cast do a wonderful job in their mediocre roles. The movie doesn't have an electric tension as needed by such works and is slow and one can't help feeling that Phil Spector hid the whole truth from everyone right till the end. The one area where it excels is by not portraying the lead character, Linda as some sort of a hero or a villain, but as an efficient person who just does her job. Not terrible, but it lacks a point. Most of the titular character's monologues are... well, purely boring. I know that they didn't want to make a documentary, but the audience needs something to understand the main character, real or not. The whole movie builds up to the trial and it ends right before it. It was done on purpose, but the whole charade was dreadful, along with the wigs, which might actually have been the only things that imbibed characterization into Spector.5/10