Reversal of Fortune | Rotten Tomatoes (2024)

Audience Reviews

Paulami A Thanks to Alan Dershowitz, Glen Close, Jeremy Irons, Ron Silver, Barbet Schroeder and an extraordinary team of cast and crew! Couldn't take my eyes off. My heartfelt regards to Alan Dershowitz for all the pro bono work you have been doing all your life! Rated 5/5 Stars • Rated 5 out of 5 stars 11/12/23 Full Review Todd One of my fav flicks. Everything about it is just perfect. An amazing example of a character piece with little plot that is so captivating. Mickey’s performance is brilliant as well as Faye’s. Love love love this movie. Rated 5/5 Stars • Rated 5 out of 5 stars 10/19/23 Full Review Jack O This is the kind of movie Reversal of Fortune is all I can say is ''Okay, this will do my pleasing.'' Reversal of Fortune is a good drama film about Claus von Bulow been accused of murdering his wife Sunny von Bulow with an overdose of insulin and Sunny thinks she's slipped into a coma. The story is well good and well structured. Glenn Close, Jeremy Irons and Ron Silver are both good in this like Jeremy Irons as Claus von Bulow and that's his Academy Award winning role and Ron Silver as the professor. Jeremy Irons and Ron Silver both had screen time than Glenn Close. Well, there is one scene where the maid has found a puddle of urine where Sunny p!$$ed in the bed and the maid says ''If madam had been to the bathroom, she would not have peed in her bed.'' Now the line that Jeremy Irons says after Ron Silver says ''You are a very strange man.'', he says ''You have no idea.'' Now let me clarify that in mind. In The Lion King where Jeremy Irons played Scar, he said the exact same thing after Simba says a line like this ''You're so weird.'' ''You have no idea.'' Couldn't you believe it? Jeremy says that line in two films he stared in, Reversal of Fortune and The Lion King! That's a coincidence! Rated 4/5 Stars • Rated 4 out of 5 stars 06/19/23 Full Review Bored N Solid drama, with an interesting mystery and true life case at its core. The acting was good too, though the way into the film is more through the Lawyers. At times it hard to really engage with the lead character or his wife. Its a slow burn, but worth checking out. Rated 3/5 Stars • Rated 3 out of 5 stars 05/11/23 Full Review William L Alan Dershowitz is just your average morally upright guy in the suburbs - middle aged, an obsessive Celtics fan, worrying over whether or not he did his best in his pro-bono case work. He just also charges $300/hour in the '80s and happens to have been involved with half of the high profile legal cases of the past 50 years. First off, Jeremy Irons is great in this film. He plays the well-spoken, deceptive upper crust with such a level of intrigue, his words come across like a mixture of honey and venom as charms those around him while turning icy at the mention of less desirable features of his past conduct. With him as the hated focus of an entire nation of looky-loos eager for real-world entertainment based on the misconduct of the wealthy, Reversal of Fortune finds solid footing as an entertaining investigative thriller (it's really not a legal drama; so little takes place in an actual courtroom that you can't refer to it as such accurately).My biggest gripe with this film is its willingness to introduce sincere moral ambiguity - exploring the need for everyone to have a sincere defense to avoid miscarriages of justice, introducing the slimy character of Irons' Claus von Bülow to counter the high-minded legal posturing, and introducing genuine concerns about the validity of the original investigation, particularly the presence of private investigators presenting evidence. However, the film nearly falls apart with its treatment of Dershowitz as a character. Reversal of Fortune is based on the book of the von Bülow trial by Dershowitz himself, and as a result (despite Silver's compelling performance) the film turns into a pure vanity project for Dershowitz. Contrasting painfully against the moral quagmire of the narrative, the famous lawyer is shown as both a brilliant legal titan and a relatable everyman, arranging a pickup basketball tournament with his students (for which he has time to order custom shirts and signage for, despite constantly talking about how little time they have for the case) while simultaneously fighting a pro bono case for brothers on Death Row. This is all capped by a note-perfect scene to close out Dershowitz's involvement in the film, where he delivers good news to von Bülow before talking about how he's not in moral agreement with him as he walks into the elevator; in this film, Dershowitz is an unerring moral compass, and it's ridiculous. Apart from that, not a bad movie. (3/5) Rated 3/5 Stars • Rated 3 out of 5 stars 11/07/21 Full Review Audience Member The words of this review title happened to be written in pen on the videotape box of this movie that I checked out of the library. Whoever wrote them told no lie.The movie is based on Alan Dershowtiz's book of the same title, where he takes on the appeal of the attempted murder conviction of socialite Klaus von Bulow, who allegedly tried to murder his wife Sunny through an injection of insulin. Dershowitz tells this to his group of college-age legal helpers, one of whom tries to drop out in disgust, but Dershowitz changes her mind by telling her that the idea is to get the money to continue their pro bono legal quest to help two young black ghetto kids who are also facing criminal charges. Dershowitz also mentions that the state of Rhode Island's judiciary has a corrupt legal system. Also, when they do a test of how liquid coats straws, it suggests that the evidence that von Bulow might have injected Sunny with insulin might not be so real after all.Jeremy Irons gives a good performance as an icy, haughty aristocrat, both in his scenes with Dershowitz and his legal team and with the flashback scenes with him and Sunny. Also, Dershowitz is shown as haughty and pompous in his own right, even if his heart is supposedly in the right place. And the movie does not make any conclusions as to whether von Bulow was guilty or not; no surprise when Dershowitz's tactic was to cast doubt on the evidence that his client actually made any attempt to kill his wife, even if he had a motive to do so. Indeed, the movie implies that Sunny had mental problems and was probably suicidal.Dershowitz might have wanted to come across as a hero doing his job. The latter is certainly true, but he has proved no more heroic than any other defense lawyer. Rated 3.5/5 Stars • Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/22/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Reversal of Fortune

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