Top 5 Lawyer Movies
Published:From old school classics like To Kill a Mockingbird and 12 Angry Men, to modern classics like My Cousin Vinny, our Top 5 Lawyer Movies showcase the finest courtroom dramas ever filmed! What do you consider to be the best legal films ever made? Also, be sure to check out this definitive list of lawyer movies if you're interested in more than just our Top 5!
1) To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
- Box Office: $13.1 million
- Starring: Gregory Peck, John Megna, Frank Overton, Mary Badham
- Tagline: The most beloved and widely read Pulitzer Prize Winner now comes vividly alive on the screen!
- Trivia: The watch used in the film was a prop, but Harper Lee gave Gregory Peck her father's watch after the film was completed because he reminded her so much of him.
- Summary: Atticus Finch, a lawyer in the Depression-era South, defends a black man against an undeserved rape charge, and his children against prejudice.
2) My Cousin Vinny (1992)
- Box Office: $64.1 million
- Starring: Joe Pesci, Ralph Macchio, Marisa Tomei, Mitchell Whitfield, Fred Gwynne
- Tagline: A Comedy Of Trial And Error
- Trivia: Temperatures exceeded 100 degrees during the courtroom scenes, which were filmed in the midst of a Georgia summer in a converted warehouse with a corrugated metal roof.
- Summary: Two New Yorkers are accused of murder in rural Alabama while on their way back to college, and one of their cousins--an inexperienced, loudmouth lawyer not accustomed to Southern rules and manners--comes in to defend them.
3) Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
- Box Office: $9 million
- Starring: Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich, Charles Laughton
- Tagline: The most electrifying entertainment of our time!
- Trivia: In order to show just one of Marlene Dietrich's famous legs, an entire scene was written that required 145 extras, 38 stunt men and $90,000.
- Summary: A veteran British barrister must defend his client in a murder trial that has surprise after surprise.
4) 12 Angry Men (1957)
- Box Office: $1 million
- Starring: Henry Fonda, Jack Klugman, Lee J. Cobb, Martin Balsam
- Tagline: ...it explodes like twelve sticks of dynamite!
- Trivia: Sidney Lumet had the actors all stay in the same room for hours on end and do their lines over and over without filming them. This was to give them a real taste of what it would be like to be cooped up in a room with the same people.
- Summary: A jury holdout attempts to prevent a miscarriage of justice by forcing his colleagues to reconsider the evidence.
5) Judgement at Nuremberg (1961)
- Box Office: $10 million
- Starring: Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Marlene Dietrich, Maximilian Schell
- Tagline: The event the world will never forget.
- Trivia: Many of the actors involved in the film did so for a fraction of their usual salary because they felt the subject matter was so important.
- Summary: In 1948, an American court in occupied Germany tries four Nazi judges for war crimes.
