Dark lofts, swinging doors, empty parking lots, and so on are all nicely handled, but they’re also familiar to an audience that always seems to be ahead of the story’s characters.īedelia gives a dominating performance, but the woman she plays is too intelligent and too bright to behave in such senseless manner. Though a first-time helmer, Bindley gives his picture a smooth and polished look, displaying some mastery over the genre’s tricks– and visual cliches. The courtroom format relies heavily on fine-tuned dialogue and unanticipated revelations, but Bindley’s writing, specifically in the court sequences, is borderline banal and the disclosures made not particularly suspenseful. Realizing she’s been set up, Gwen begins a desperate race against time to prove her innocence. Soon, what seemed “circumstantial” evidence turns out to be a well-planned and planted case, resulting with Gwen as the prime suspect. When Gwen’s roguish colleague, Charles Matron (Dabney Coleman), “a chronic flirt,” is found dead in his office, she’s asked to preside over his murder case. Seemingly curious and sexually unfulfilled, one night she follows Martin (Billy Wirth), a sexy law clerk, into his office and a steamy affair evolves, though she knows nothing about him. Gwen Warwick (Bedelia) is a stern, accomplished criminal court judge, soon to be appointed to the Michigan State Supreme Court. As such, it’s best suited to the tube with good prospects on video. Its star, the graceful Bonnie Bedelia, does an honorable job, but the film’s “B” plot and its lack of sustained suspense make it just another generic item. (Violence, nudity, sexual situations, profanity.Judicial Consent aspires to belong to the league of suspense thrillers about female lawyers, like Jagged Edge with Glenn Close or Cher’s vehicle, Suspect. Coleman, Patton and Kevin McCarthy make the best of underdeveloped characters. Lisa Blount is strong as theĪmbitious DA briefly suspected of the murder. Wirth is effective as the mysterious Martin. It is hard to believe that a woman as intelligent and accomplished as Gwen would fall into Martin's trap. But in a scuffle in Gwen's attic, Martin is killed.īedelia gives an engaging performance, but her interpretation of the central character may be the film's fatal flaw. Rather than kill Gwen, he wants to see her imprisoned, like his father. Weapon and prove her innocence, Martin returns. She learns that she had sentenced Martin's father to life imprisonment. Knowing that her arrest is imminent, Gwen frantically researches her past cases to discover Martin's identity and motive. She brings the police to Martin's loft, but he has disappeared. She assumes that her husband has framed her, but then she learns that Martin is the one who set Gwen presides over the case, and discovers that evidence planted at the crime scene links her to the murder.
Charles is found murdered, and one of his many lovers is arrested for the crime. Her jealous husband Alan (Will Patton) knows Gwen is cheating, but suspects that her lover is attorney Charles Mayron (Dabney Coleman), Gwen's friend andĬolleague. Her marriage on the rocks, Judge Gwen Warwick (Bonnie Bedelia) begins an illicit affair with a young library clerk, Martin (Billy Wirth). It was released direct to home video after some 1994 festival showings. William Bindley's debut feature aspires to the John Grisham league of legal thriller but, with a pedestrian plot and a lack of sustained suspense, JUDICIAL CONSENT falls well short.