Lawyers, Guns and Money: An occasional series on movies, TV and other stories about lawyers and the law — And Justice for All (1979, Dir. Norman Jewison)

And Justice for All, the overstuffed but strangely compelling 1979 legal drama starring Al Pacino, begins with the voice of a child reading the Pledge of Allegiance. It’s a sardonic start to a barbed, furious, free-swinging indictment of a legal system that, the movie suggests, has gone off the rails. Up is down, black is white, left is right. 

A lone Baltimore defense attorney, Pacino’s Arthur Kirkland, is among the only people upset by what he sees. And make no mistake, he’s plenty upset.