Reversal of Fortune (1990)

Alan Dershowitz a brilliant professor of law is hired by wealthy socialite Claus von Bulow to attempt to overturn his two convictions for attempted murder of his extremely wealthy wife. Based on a true story the film concentrates not on the trial like other legal thrillers, but on the preparatory work that Dershowitz and his students put in as they attempt to disprove the prosecution's case and achieve the Reversal of Fortune of the title.

Keywords: attempted-murder, backgammon, bad-guy, based-on-book, based-on-true-story, coma, courtroom, courtroom-drama, drugs, insulin

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Quotes:

Sarah: I think it's easier to love somebody than to live with them. Love is fantasy - living is work.::Alan Dershowitz: I'll say. And *those* people don't like to work.::Sarah: But if you don't do the work, the love dies and nobody wants to deal with that one.

Alan Dershowitz: You are a very strange man.::Claus von Bülow: You have no idea.

Sunny von Bülow: [narrating] I never woke from this coma, and I never will. I am what doctors call "persistent vegetative" - a vegetable. According to medical experts, I could stay like this for a very long time - brain dead, body better than ever.

Alan Dershowitz: I'm not a hired gun. I've got to feel there's some moral or constitutional issue at stake.::Claus von Bülow: But I'm absolutely innocent, and my civil liberties have been egregiously violated!::Alan Dershowitz: I've got two black kids facing the electric chair for a crime they did not commit. THEY are innocent.::Claus von Bülow: Well, before you assume I'm guilty, won't you hear my story?::Alan Dershowitz: No. Never let defendants explain; puts most of them in an awkward position.::Claus von Bülow: How do you mean?::Alan Dershowitz: Lying.

Alan Dershowitz: You do have one thing in your favor: everybody hates you.::Claus von Bülow: Well, that's a start.

Alan Dershowitz: Reminds me of my Hitler dream. You know, Hitler calls up, he's alive... needs a lawyer. I say, "Sure, come on over." Then I have to decide: do I take the case, or do I kill him?::Elon Dershowitz: You? No question.::Alan Dershowitz: I would take the case.::Elon Dershowitz: THEN kill him.

Chuck, Dershowitz's Student Staff: [to Claus] Look, I don't think you did it, Okay? But at the chinese restaurant you did duck the big question.::Alan Dershowitz: Chuck is our Alexandra Isles expert.::Chuck, Dershowitz's Student Staff: Sunny's aspirin overdose... why did she take so many? What happened? Sunny had a headache? The headache was Alexandra, right?

Claus von Bülow: There's a big difference between knowing about an affair, and have love letters crammed down your throat.

Minnie: Yeah, okay, so, someone's got to defend Claus. But why you, why us?::Alan Dershowitz: Look, you're my student, you, you have a choice. You don't have to do anything you don't want to do; that is your choice. The reason *I* take cases - and here I'm unlike most other lawyers, who are not professors and therefore have to make a living - I take cases because I get pissed off. And I am pissed off here. The family hired a private prosecutor: unacceptable! They conducted a private search! Now if we let them get away with that, rich people won't go to the cops any more. You know what they're going to do? They're going to get their own lawyers to collect evidence - and then they are going to choose which evidence they feel like passing on to the DA. And the next victim isn't going to be rich, like von Bülow - but it's going to be some poor schnook in Detroit who can't afford, or who can't find, a decent lawyer.

Raj: I agree von Bülow is guilty, but then, that's the fun - that's the challenge.::Alan Dershowitz: Now THERE is a lawyer.