*****

Saint Judy-sp

This is a great story. We meet Judy Wood (Michelle Monaghan), a young idealistic attorney who wants to specialize in immigration law. She is overwhelmed being assigned numerous cases by her new boss (Alfred Molina) but she still makes an all-out effort with each of her cases. At the same time, she is a single mom, recently divorced, trying to participate as much as possible in the raising of her young son (Gabriel Bateman). We see her getting fired for not bringing in the big bucks for her law firm. We follow her as she opens a storefront law office as the only attorney with a young intern as her assistant. The story then focuses on one young Afghan woman client, Asefa Ashwari (Leem Lubany) who is seeking asylum in the United States. She had rebelled against the poor treatment of young girls and women in her country by defiantly setting up a school for girls who were not allowed to have an education. She was arrested and received the most horrendous treatment imaginable in jail. She was able to escape to the United States where her plea for asylum is now being considered. If she is denied this request, she will be returned to her native country where she almost certainly will be murdered by her family for her defiant actions.

The realistic courtroom scenes, some of which are held in a small trailer in the prison where she is being detained are absolutely chilling and riveting. The logic of the U.S. law is very clear but heartbreaking.

Tremendous credit must be given to the screenwriter, Dmitry Portnoy, and director and producer, Sean Hanish, who worked hand in hand to get this film made. In fact, it was just about an impossible task to get the financial support for the film until President Trump was elected and this country became aware of the real meaning of the immigration crisis.

But the most amazing thing about this story is that it isn’t a story at all. Judy Wood is actually a real-life person whom the movie so realistically portrays. In fact, we met her at a preview screening along with the director and screenwriter.

This movie has drama, tension, emotion, surprise, great acting that may bring a tear to your eye, and perhaps inspire a young man or woman to decide to become a lawyer. The highest compliment that we can give to it, is to say that it reminded us a little bit of the classic film “To Kill a Mockingbird.” (2019)

Any thoughts or opinions are welcome in the comment section below.

**** 

Puncture-sp– Imagine if a simple modification, costing a few cents per item, in the manufacture of a syringe and needle used for medical injections could have saved 800,000 lives in the United States and probably many times that all over the world. But what if there is tremendous resistance to doing this because changing this system would disrupt the scheme where only certain manufactures are allowed to sell their products to hospitals and there is an elaborate kick-back system in place worth at least mutli-millions of dollars. This is the storyline of this movie based on a true story that the Kassen brothers decided that they wanted to make once they learned of the details from the writings of attorney Paul Danizer one of the participants of this unbelievable situation.  Mark and Adam Kassen grew up in a family that had some connection to the medical supply business so they knew how controlling the large companies could be. They got Chris Lopate to come up with a great screen play which the two brothers made into this film

Mike Weiss (Chris Evans) and Paul Danizer (Mark Kassen, also co-director) were high school buddies who now have a small personal injury law firm in Houston, Texas.  Mike is a drug addict but brilliant and Paul is a family man but they work well together. They come across Vicki (Vinessa Shaw), an ER nurse, who suffered a needle stick while injecting a thrashing patient that lead to her developing AIDS. She brings them to Jeffrey Dancort (Marshall Bell) who is the inventor of the safe syringe/needle device that hospitals don’t even want to look out even though it is obvious to all nurses and others that it would save lots of lives. The next thing they know they are battling the big guys with their big lawyers and lots of money. If the story sounds familiar, think Erin Brockovich. It is David versus Goliath except David is busy much of the time sniffing cocaine.  We would like to say that this is a complete fairy tale and nothing like this really happens in the U.S. Obvioulsy however it really does happen. If a lawyer has a good case they can become very wealthy as there are many variations on successful class action lawsuits that we read about all the time. But as we see in this story, it isn’t easy to pull it off and the big guys often do win the day. This film was engrossing, bold, realistic, powerful and a little scary when you realize that things like this happen all time.(2011)