Nothing But the Truth (2008 film)
Encyclopedia
Nothing but the Truth is a 2008
American
drama film
written and directed by Rod Lurie
. According to comments made by Lurie in The Truth Hurts, a bonus feature on the DVD release, his inspiration for the screenplay was the case of journalist Judith Miller
, who in July 2005 was jailed for contempt of court
for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury
investigating a leak naming Valerie Plame
as a covert CIA operative, but this was merely a starting point for what is primarily a fictional story. In an April 2009 interview, Lurie stressed, "I should say that the film is about neither of these women although certainly their stories as reported in the press went into the creation of their characters and the situation they find themselves in."
The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival
on September 8, 2008. It was scheduled to open in New York City and Los Angeles on December 19, but because distributor Yari Film Group Releasing
filed for Chapter 11
protection, it never was given a theatrical release.
) is an ambitious reporter for the Capital Sun-Times. When she discovers fellow soccer mom
Erica Van Doren (Vera Farmiga
) is working as a covert operative for the CIA and recently returned from Venezuela
, where she was investigating an assassination attempt on the President of the United States
, she confronts her and requests confirmation. Erica refuses to cooperate, but Rachel has no doubts about the veracity of the report, and her story becomes front-page news with the support of editor Bonnie Benjamin (Angela Bassett
) and Avril Aaronson (Noah Wyle
), who serves as the newspaper's legal counselor.
Because revealing a covert operative's identity is a treason
ous offence and because the individual who leaked the information to Rachel is a potential threat to national security, special Federal prosecutor Patton Dubois (Matt Dillon
) convenes a grand jury
and demands to know who her source is, information she refuses to divulge. High profile attorney Albert Burnside (Alan Alda
), hired by the newspaper to defend Rachel, is certain his personal friendship with Judge Hall will facilitate matters and is shocked when his client is jailed for contempt of court. Days become weeks, and then months, but Rachel steadfastly defends the principle of confidentiality, a position that eventually estranges her husband Ray (David Schwimmer
), alienates her young son Timmy (Preston Bailey
), and costs her embattled newspaper hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and legal fees. She is stricken when a member of an extremist right-wing group assassinates Van Doren in her own driveway, as he perceives Van Doren's report on Venezuela's innocence to be unpatriotic, but she remains silent. Eventually, the President's Chief of Staff
comes forward and admits that he corroborated with Armstrong's investigation into Van Doren's identity. However, Dubois is only interested in Armstrong's original source. Armstrong pleas to Dubois that she could never give up her source as they would have to deal with the consequential ramifications of the death of Van Doren. Burnside even argues her case before the Supreme Court, but they decide against him 5-4, citing the overriding concern of national security.
Eventually, Judge Hall decides to release her from jail, as he is convinced she will never divulge her source and, therefore, cannot be pressured through continued incarceration. On the day she is released, Dubois has the U.S. Marshals arrest her for obstruction of justice and convinces her to take a deal for a shortened sentence rather than go to trial. She agrees to two years in prison, with the possibility of early parole for good behavior. As she is taken to the facility, she reminisces about her time as a volunteer at Timmy's school, and when she spoke to Van Doren's daughter, who revealed to her on a school field trip that her mother worked for the government and recently went to Venezuela on "business" thus revealing her as the original source.
had argued for The New York Times
and Judith Miller in the grand jury investigation of her report about Valerie Plame, and he was hired as a consultant on the film by screenwriter/director Rod Lurie, who was so impressed with his demeanor he cast Abrams as Judge Hall.
The film was shot on location in Memphis, Tennessee
.
reports that 42 out of the 53 reviews they tallied for the film were positive for a score of 79% and a certification of "fresh". They summarized the critics consensus by saying, "A well-crafted political thriller, Nothing But the Truth features a strong cast that helps the real-life drama make an effortless transition to the big screen." Manohla Dargis
of the New York Times thought the "confusing film . . . mixes familiar plot points . . . with some grievous nonsense, most of which involves the two women’s irritatingly distracting home lives . . . That’s too bad for all sorts of reasons, including this one: when not cooing inanities at pipsqueaks, the actresses are pretty good, both together and individually. There’s pleasure in watching them go manolo a manolo against each other, particularly Ms. Farmiga, who fills out her size 0 with macho swagger. Despite a shaky start, Ms. Beckinsale does eventually look the part of the harassed and haggard heroine, if largely by not wearing any eye makeup."
In the Los Angeles Times
, Sam Adams observed the film "isn't ripped from the headlines so much as it's pasted together like a ransom note, using scraps so small their origins are indiscernible. The obvious inspiration for the story of a newspaper reporter who is jailed for refusing to reveal her sources is the Valerie Plame affair, and for a while the details match up . . . But from there, Lurie spins off into invention like a Law & Order
writer on deadline, scrambling the issues so thoroughly it's no longer clear what, if anything, the movie is meant to address."
Peter Travers
of Rolling Stone
rated the film three out of four stars and commented, "Lurie is expert at springing surprises and getting the best out of a first-rate cast. Beckinsale excels at finding the chinks in Rachel's armor. Farmiga goes so deep into her character you can feel her nerve endings. And Alda is simply superb as a lawyer whose peacock vanity about his designer wardrobe hardly prepares you for his moving argument for principles before the Supreme Court. Lurie also convinced Floyd Abrams, who represented Miller in court, to play the trial judge, and the canny counselor steals every scene he's in. Nothing But the Truth is currently in distribution hell, which means you might have to seek it out. It's worth the trouble. Lurie has crafted a different kind of thriller, one with a mind and a heart."
Writing for the online Slant Magazine
, Jay Antani stated, "The film easily could have gotten saddled with liberal polemics and pedestrian plot twists, but Lurie's focus is on lean, intelligent storytelling while keeping his righteous anger worked seamlessly into plotting and character development. Sarah Boyd's superb editing keeps apace with the taut, compelling script, and the performers are no slouches either. After years shunting between various genre vehicles, Beckinsale proves her chops as a serious dramatic actress. Dillon and Alda are dependably strong, while Bassett, Wyle, Farmiga, and Schwimmer provide sharp support. All combine to create a worthy political thriller whose good intentions don't spoil the pleasures of a good yarn well told."
Stephen Garrett of Time Out New York thought the film was "both exhilarating and frustrating" because "So few movies dare to tackle intelligent, provocative, socially relevant topics in a mature framework that doesn’t condescend. But there’s a halfway point when the rush of watching the inner machinations of power players turns into the listless predictability of a TV courtroom drama, crossed with the voyeurism of a mild grindhouse prison movie."
In reviewing the DVD release, Roger Ebert
of the Chicago Sun-Times
awarded it 3½ out of four stars and called it "a finely crafted film of people and ideas, of the sort more common before the movie mainstream became a sausage factory. It respects the intelligence of the audience, it contains real drama, it earns its suspense, and it has a point to make."
released the film on DVD on April 28, 2009. It is in anamorphic widescreen
format with an English audio track and subtitles. Bonus features include commentary with screenwriter/director Rod Lurie and producer Marc Frydman, The Truth Hurts: The Making of Nothing but the Truth, and eight deleted scenes.
2008 in film
This is a list of all major films made in 2008.-Highest-grossing films:Please note that following the tradition of the English-language film industry, these are the top grossing films that were first released in the USA in 2008...
American
Cinema of the United States
The cinema of the United States, also known as Hollywood, has had a profound effect on cinema across the world since the early 20th century. Its history is sometimes separated into four main periods: the silent film era, classical Hollywood cinema, New Hollywood, and the contemporary period...
drama film
Drama film
A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...
written and directed by Rod Lurie
Rod Lurie
Rod Lurie is an Israeli-American director, screenwriter and former film critic.-Early life and career:The son of internationally syndicated cartoonist Ranan Lurie, he was born in Israel but moved to the United States at a young age, growing up in Greenwich, Connecticut, and Honolulu,...
. According to comments made by Lurie in The Truth Hurts, a bonus feature on the DVD release, his inspiration for the screenplay was the case of journalist Judith Miller
Judith Miller (journalist)
Judith Miller is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, formerly of the New York Times Washington bureau. Her coverage of Iraq's alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction program both before and after the 2003 invasion generated much controversy...
, who in July 2005 was jailed for contempt of court
Contempt of court
Contempt of court is a court order which, in the context of a court trial or hearing, declares a person or organization to have disobeyed or been disrespectful of the court's authority...
for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury
Grand jury
A grand jury is a type of jury that determines whether a criminal indictment will issue. Currently, only the United States retains grand juries, although some other common law jurisdictions formerly employed them, and most other jurisdictions employ some other type of preliminary hearing...
investigating a leak naming Valerie Plame
Valerie Plame
Valerie Elise Plame Wilson , known as Valerie Plame, Valerie E. Wilson, and Valerie Plame Wilson, is a former United States CIA Operations Officer and the author of a memoir detailing her career and the events leading up to her resignation from the CIA.-Early life :Valerie Elise Plame was born on...
as a covert CIA operative, but this was merely a starting point for what is primarily a fictional story. In an April 2009 interview, Lurie stressed, "I should say that the film is about neither of these women although certainly their stories as reported in the press went into the creation of their characters and the situation they find themselves in."
The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival
Toronto International Film Festival
The Toronto International Film Festival is a publicly-attended film festival held each September in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In 2010, 339 films from 59 countries were screened at 32 screens in downtown Toronto venues...
on September 8, 2008. It was scheduled to open in New York City and Los Angeles on December 19, but because distributor Yari Film Group Releasing
Yari Film Group
The Yari Film Group is an independent film company founded in 2002, and headed by producer Bob Yari, which deals in financing, production, acquisition, sales and distribution of theatrical feature films....
filed for Chapter 11
Chapter 11, Title 11, United States Code
Chapter 11 is a chapter of the United States Bankruptcy Code, which permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Chapter 11 bankruptcy is available to every business, whether organized as a corporation or sole proprietorship, and to individuals, although it is most...
protection, it never was given a theatrical release.
Plot
Rachel Armstrong (Kate BeckinsaleKate Beckinsale
Kathryn Bailey "Kate" Beckinsale is an English actress. After some minor television roles, she made her film debut in Much Ado About Nothing while still a student at Oxford University...
) is an ambitious reporter for the Capital Sun-Times. When she discovers fellow soccer mom
Soccer mom
The phrase soccer mom broadly refers to a middle-class suburban woman who spends a significant amount of her time transporting her school-age children to their sporting events or other activities. Indices of American magazines and newspapers show relatively little usage of the term until a 1995...
Erica Van Doren (Vera Farmiga
Vera Farmiga
Vera Ann Farmiga is an American actress and director. Farmiga made her film debut in the 1998 drama thriller Return to Paradise. This was followed by supporting roles in the 2000 romantic film Autumn in New York and the 2001 television series UC: Undercover...
) is working as a covert operative for the CIA and recently returned from Venezuela
Venezuela
Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...
, where she was investigating an assassination attempt on the President of the United States
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
, she confronts her and requests confirmation. Erica refuses to cooperate, but Rachel has no doubts about the veracity of the report, and her story becomes front-page news with the support of editor Bonnie Benjamin (Angela Bassett
Angela Bassett
Angela Evelyn Bassett is an American actress. She has become well known for her biographical film roles portraying real life women in African American culture, including singer Tina Turner in the motion picture What's Love Got to Do with It, as well as Betty Shabazz in the films Malcolm X and...
) and Avril Aaronson (Noah Wyle
Noah Wyle
Noah Strausser Speer Wyle is an American film, television and theatre actor. He is best known for his role as Dr. John Truman Carter III in the Medical drama ER. He has also played Steve Jobs in the 1999 docudrama Pirates of Silicon Valley and Flynn Carsen in The Librarian franchise...
), who serves as the newspaper's legal counselor.
Because revealing a covert operative's identity is a treason
Treason
In law, treason is the crime that covers some of the more extreme acts against one's sovereign or nation. Historically, treason also covered the murder of specific social superiors, such as the murder of a husband by his wife. Treason against the king was known as high treason and treason against a...
ous offence and because the individual who leaked the information to Rachel is a potential threat to national security, special Federal prosecutor Patton Dubois (Matt Dillon
Matt Dillon
Matthew Raymond "Matt" Dillon is an American actor and film director. He began acting in the late 1970s, gaining fame as a teenage idol during the 1980s.- Early life :...
) convenes a grand jury
Grand jury
A grand jury is a type of jury that determines whether a criminal indictment will issue. Currently, only the United States retains grand juries, although some other common law jurisdictions formerly employed them, and most other jurisdictions employ some other type of preliminary hearing...
and demands to know who her source is, information she refuses to divulge. High profile attorney Albert Burnside (Alan Alda
Alan Alda
Alphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo , better known as Alan Alda, is an American actor, director, screenwriter, and author. A six-time Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award winner, he is best known for his role as Hawkeye Pierce in the TV series M*A*S*H...
), hired by the newspaper to defend Rachel, is certain his personal friendship with Judge Hall will facilitate matters and is shocked when his client is jailed for contempt of court. Days become weeks, and then months, but Rachel steadfastly defends the principle of confidentiality, a position that eventually estranges her husband Ray (David Schwimmer
David Schwimmer
David Lawrence Schwimmer is an American actor and director of television and film. He was born in New York City, and his family moved to Los Angeles when he was two. He began his acting career performing in school plays at Beverly Hills High School. In 1988, he graduated from Northwestern...
), alienates her young son Timmy (Preston Bailey
Preston Bailey
Preston Bailey is an American child actor who started acting at the age of two. He is probably most known for appearing in the Showtime TV series Dexter and for starring in such as films Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer, Children of the Corn, and The Crazies.-Biography:Bailey was born in...
), and costs her embattled newspaper hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and legal fees. She is stricken when a member of an extremist right-wing group assassinates Van Doren in her own driveway, as he perceives Van Doren's report on Venezuela's innocence to be unpatriotic, but she remains silent. Eventually, the President's Chief of Staff
Chief of Staff
The title, chief of staff, identifies the leader of a complex organization, institution, or body of persons and it also may identify a Principal Staff Officer , who is the coordinator of the supporting staff or a primary aide to an important individual, such as a president.In general, a chief of...
comes forward and admits that he corroborated with Armstrong's investigation into Van Doren's identity. However, Dubois is only interested in Armstrong's original source. Armstrong pleas to Dubois that she could never give up her source as they would have to deal with the consequential ramifications of the death of Van Doren. Burnside even argues her case before the Supreme Court, but they decide against him 5-4, citing the overriding concern of national security.
Eventually, Judge Hall decides to release her from jail, as he is convinced she will never divulge her source and, therefore, cannot be pressured through continued incarceration. On the day she is released, Dubois has the U.S. Marshals arrest her for obstruction of justice and convinces her to take a deal for a shortened sentence rather than go to trial. She agrees to two years in prison, with the possibility of early parole for good behavior. As she is taken to the facility, she reminisces about her time as a volunteer at Timmy's school, and when she spoke to Van Doren's daughter, who revealed to her on a school field trip that her mother worked for the government and recently went to Venezuela on "business" thus revealing her as the original source.
Production
Attorney Floyd AbramsFloyd Abrams
Floyd Abrams is an American attorney at Cahill Gordon & Reindel. He is an expert on constitutional law, and many arguments in the briefs he has written before the United States Supreme Court have been adopted as United States Constitutional interpretative law as it relates to the First Amendment...
had argued for The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
and Judith Miller in the grand jury investigation of her report about Valerie Plame, and he was hired as a consultant on the film by screenwriter/director Rod Lurie, who was so impressed with his demeanor he cast Abrams as Judge Hall.
The film was shot on location in Memphis, Tennessee
Memphis, Tennessee
Memphis is a city in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Tennessee, and the county seat of Shelby County. The city is located on the 4th Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers....
.
Cast
- Kate BeckinsaleKate BeckinsaleKathryn Bailey "Kate" Beckinsale is an English actress. After some minor television roles, she made her film debut in Much Ado About Nothing while still a student at Oxford University...
: Rachel Armstrong - Matt DillonMatt DillonMatthew Raymond "Matt" Dillon is an American actor and film director. He began acting in the late 1970s, gaining fame as a teenage idol during the 1980s.- Early life :...
: Patton Dubois - Alan AldaAlan AldaAlphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo , better known as Alan Alda, is an American actor, director, screenwriter, and author. A six-time Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award winner, he is best known for his role as Hawkeye Pierce in the TV series M*A*S*H...
: Albert Burnside - Vera FarmigaVera FarmigaVera Ann Farmiga is an American actress and director. Farmiga made her film debut in the 1998 drama thriller Return to Paradise. This was followed by supporting roles in the 2000 romantic film Autumn in New York and the 2001 television series UC: Undercover...
: Erica Van Doren - Angela BassettAngela BassettAngela Evelyn Bassett is an American actress. She has become well known for her biographical film roles portraying real life women in African American culture, including singer Tina Turner in the motion picture What's Love Got to Do with It, as well as Betty Shabazz in the films Malcolm X and...
: Bonnie Benjamin - David SchwimmerDavid SchwimmerDavid Lawrence Schwimmer is an American actor and director of television and film. He was born in New York City, and his family moved to Los Angeles when he was two. He began his acting career performing in school plays at Beverly Hills High School. In 1988, he graduated from Northwestern...
: Ray Armstrong - Noah WyleNoah WyleNoah Strausser Speer Wyle is an American film, television and theatre actor. He is best known for his role as Dr. John Truman Carter III in the Medical drama ER. He has also played Steve Jobs in the 1999 docudrama Pirates of Silicon Valley and Flynn Carsen in The Librarian franchise...
: Avril Aaronson - Floyd AbramsFloyd AbramsFloyd Abrams is an American attorney at Cahill Gordon & Reindel. He is an expert on constitutional law, and many arguments in the briefs he has written before the United States Supreme Court have been adopted as United States Constitutional interpretative law as it relates to the First Amendment...
: Judge Hall - Preston BaileyPreston BaileyPreston Bailey is an American child actor who started acting at the age of two. He is probably most known for appearing in the Showtime TV series Dexter and for starring in such as films Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer, Children of the Corn, and The Crazies.-Biography:Bailey was born in...
: Timmy Armstrong - Rod LurieRod LurieRod Lurie is an Israeli-American director, screenwriter and former film critic.-Early life and career:The son of internationally syndicated cartoonist Ranan Lurie, he was born in Israel but moved to the United States at a young age, growing up in Greenwich, Connecticut, and Honolulu,...
: journalist
Critical reception
Although the film never officially opened, several critics who had seen it in advance screenings nonetheless published their reviews. The review tallying website rotten tomatoesRotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
reports that 42 out of the 53 reviews they tallied for the film were positive for a score of 79% and a certification of "fresh". They summarized the critics consensus by saying, "A well-crafted political thriller, Nothing But the Truth features a strong cast that helps the real-life drama make an effortless transition to the big screen." Manohla Dargis
Manohla Dargis
Manohla Dargis is a chief film critic for The New York Times, along with A.O. Scott. She was formerly a chief film critic for the Los Angeles Times, the film editor at the LA Weekly, and a film critic at The Village Voice. She has written for a variety of publications, including Film Comment and...
of the New York Times thought the "confusing film . . . mixes familiar plot points . . . with some grievous nonsense, most of which involves the two women’s irritatingly distracting home lives . . . That’s too bad for all sorts of reasons, including this one: when not cooing inanities at pipsqueaks, the actresses are pretty good, both together and individually. There’s pleasure in watching them go manolo a manolo against each other, particularly Ms. Farmiga, who fills out her size 0 with macho swagger. Despite a shaky start, Ms. Beckinsale does eventually look the part of the harassed and haggard heroine, if largely by not wearing any eye makeup."
In the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
, Sam Adams observed the film "isn't ripped from the headlines so much as it's pasted together like a ransom note, using scraps so small their origins are indiscernible. The obvious inspiration for the story of a newspaper reporter who is jailed for refusing to reveal her sources is the Valerie Plame affair, and for a while the details match up . . . But from there, Lurie spins off into invention like a Law & Order
Law & Order
Law & Order is an American police procedural and legal drama television series, created by Dick Wolf and part of the Law & Order franchise. It aired on NBC, and in syndication on various cable networks. Law & Order premiered on September 13, 1990, and completed its 20th and final season on May 24,...
writer on deadline, scrambling the issues so thoroughly it's no longer clear what, if anything, the movie is meant to address."
Peter Travers
Peter Travers
Peter Travers is an American film critic, who has written for, in turn, People and Rolling Stone. Travers also hosts a celebrity interview show called Popcorn on ABC News Now and ABCNews.com.-Career:...
of Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
rated the film three out of four stars and commented, "Lurie is expert at springing surprises and getting the best out of a first-rate cast. Beckinsale excels at finding the chinks in Rachel's armor. Farmiga goes so deep into her character you can feel her nerve endings. And Alda is simply superb as a lawyer whose peacock vanity about his designer wardrobe hardly prepares you for his moving argument for principles before the Supreme Court. Lurie also convinced Floyd Abrams, who represented Miller in court, to play the trial judge, and the canny counselor steals every scene he's in. Nothing But the Truth is currently in distribution hell, which means you might have to seek it out. It's worth the trouble. Lurie has crafted a different kind of thriller, one with a mind and a heart."
Writing for the online Slant Magazine
Slant Magazine
Slant Magazine is an online publication that features reviews of movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and musicians. The site covers various film festivals like the New York Film Festival.- History :...
, Jay Antani stated, "The film easily could have gotten saddled with liberal polemics and pedestrian plot twists, but Lurie's focus is on lean, intelligent storytelling while keeping his righteous anger worked seamlessly into plotting and character development. Sarah Boyd's superb editing keeps apace with the taut, compelling script, and the performers are no slouches either. After years shunting between various genre vehicles, Beckinsale proves her chops as a serious dramatic actress. Dillon and Alda are dependably strong, while Bassett, Wyle, Farmiga, and Schwimmer provide sharp support. All combine to create a worthy political thriller whose good intentions don't spoil the pleasures of a good yarn well told."
Stephen Garrett of Time Out New York thought the film was "both exhilarating and frustrating" because "So few movies dare to tackle intelligent, provocative, socially relevant topics in a mature framework that doesn’t condescend. But there’s a halfway point when the rush of watching the inner machinations of power players turns into the listless predictability of a TV courtroom drama, crossed with the voyeurism of a mild grindhouse prison movie."
In reviewing the DVD release, Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
of the Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
The Chicago Sun-Times is an American daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois. It is the flagship paper of the Sun-Times Media Group.-History:The Chicago Sun-Times is the oldest continuously published daily newspaper in the city...
awarded it 3½ out of four stars and called it "a finely crafted film of people and ideas, of the sort more common before the movie mainstream became a sausage factory. It respects the intelligence of the audience, it contains real drama, it earns its suspense, and it has a point to make."
DVD release
Sony Pictures Home EntertainmentSony Pictures Home Entertainment
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is the home video distribution arm of Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation. It was established in November 1979 as Columbia Pictures Home Entertainment, releasing 20 titles: The Anderson Tapes, Bell, Book and Candle, Born Free, Breakout,...
released the film on DVD on April 28, 2009. It is in anamorphic widescreen
Anamorphic widescreen
Anamorphic widescreen, when applied to DVD manufacture, is a video process that horizontally squeezes a widescreen image so that it can be stored in a standard 4:3 aspect ratio DVD image frame. Compatible playback equipment can then re-expand the horizontal dimension to show the original widescreen...
format with an English audio track and subtitles. Bonus features include commentary with screenwriter/director Rod Lurie and producer Marc Frydman, The Truth Hurts: The Making of Nothing but the Truth, and eight deleted scenes.