THE VERDICT (Het Vonnis) B+
This is a film that wastes no time and gets the viewer right
into the middle of the action, introducing Koen De Bouw as Luc Segers, an ambitious
corporate executive that his risen to the top of the corporate ladder and is
about to be named as the successor of the retiring CEO at lunch the next day,
but not before the company throws a celebratory office party. On the ride home, with his daughter asleep in
the back seat of the car, they stop to fill up for gas while his wife runs
across the street for a loaf of bread in a 24-hour automat. While the floor is strewn with litter, a man
with an icepick in his hand appears from behind the shadows, assaulting her
instantly, literally beating her to death.
When Segers runs across the street to check what’s taking her so long,
the man coldcocks him with a whack across the face, knocking him out cold,
while his daughter gets hit by a car running to help her Dad. Segers survives after a 3-week coma, but the
other two perish on the scene. When he’s
well enough to visit the local police station, he finds the man thumbing
through mug shots, Kenny De Groot (Hendrik Aerts), a career criminal with a
lengthy rap sheet where he’s spent his life in and out of prison, who is
immediately arrested, but instantly released on a technicality when the
indictment papers are inadvertently left unsigned. Segers goes ballistics when his own attorney
(Johan Leysen) explains the error, as does the public at large, who are
outraged first over the brutality of the crime, but then that such a vicious
criminal could be released to the street.
The incident is seen through a cross segment of society,
from news broadcasts and their legal experts, to talk shows with their
opinionated audiences, as well as the bulldog prosecuting attorney (Jappe
Claes), and the the publicly elected District Attorney, all of whom find the
event disgusting, but the legal analysts argue that the laws of a democracy are
not a perfect system, but adherence to the rule of law provides society’s moral
compass. Making matters even worse,
Segers is simply not the same after De Groot is released, where he’s listlessly
inattentive at work, and his mind seems elsewhere. As a result, someone else is chosen as the
successor CEO, while Segers begins stalking the De Groot garage, eventually
following him back to his garage where he empties the chambers of an 8-round
automatic pistol into his chest, killing him on the spot. His arrest creates even more outrage, as he’s
a sympathetic public figure, where a near unanimous consensus believes he never
would have killed the man had the arrested criminal not been released by a
bureaucratic bungling. Nevertheless, the
prosecutor wants a conviction, calling a murder a murder, as he doesn’t want to
see the start of vigilante justice where victims, such as rape or assault or
kidnap victims, who have been wronged or harmed begin taking the law into their
own hands. However, Segers has other
ideas, as he intends to challenge a system that allows an identified murderer
to be placed back on the streets again, as that certainly doesn’t represent the
larger public interest.
The film uses a cool and detached style showing only what’s
essential, becoming a taut thriller, much like American conspiracy thrillers of
the 70’s, where the overall production values feel meticulously designed, which
give the film a vividly realistic detail.
The ensemble cast feels naturalistic and doesn’t resort to stereotype,
where the courtroom scenes are riveting.
All the principles are excellent in presenting the case, where Segers
takes a gamble by choosing to use a defense covered under Article 7.1 of the
Belgian Constitution, where a traumatic incident can cause a person to
instantaneously snap, usually on the spur of the moment, such as a man raping
your wife or attacking your child, where any harm caused under these narrowly defined
circumstances may be deemed lawful. The
problem here is that it was not spontaneous, but premeditated, as Segers
stalked De Groot for several days waiting for his opportunity. The evidence presented is starkly compelling,
but much like Sidney Lumet’s film by the same name, THE VERDICT (1982), it’s
the closing arguments that really shine.
Perhaps most interesting is the presence of De Groot’s defense attorney
(Veerle Baetens) who is protecting the rights of the deceased, who brilliantly
makes the case that legal technicalities are no small errors, providing a
narrative of De Groot’s troubled childhood that is quite simply devastating,
while the prosecutor argues that similarly harmed victims of sex crimes or drunken
drivers or senseless assault don’t have the right to enact revenge on their perpetrators,
as this is a matter for the police and the courts, not individuals taking the
law into their own hands. On the other
hand Segers’ lawyer suggests that when the system fails to protect its
citizens, as they are constitutionally mandated to do, it inflicts further harm
on top of trauma that already exists, often forcing people to deal with the
impossible. At nearly two hours, the
film feels concise and beautifully edited, moving at a rapid pace, where the
director knows how to ratchet up the tension and sustain it throughout in the
complex legal exposé.
