Music Box **** (1989, Jessica Lange, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Frederic Forrest) – Classic Movie Review 6666

Director Constantin Costa-Gavras’s 1989 thriller Music Box stars Jessica Lange as successful  American attorney Ann Talbot, who is shocked and devastated when her loving, hardworking, patriotic Hungarian immigrant father Mike Laszlo (Armin Mueller-Stahl) is accused of committing terrible World War Two war crimes nearly 50 years earlier after secret wartime records are released by the Russians.

At his insistence, she agrees to defend him in court and sets out to prove that the charges are either an error or a Communist plot as a deliberate attempt to discredit and destroy him.

Director Costa-Gavras’s film is both a riveting courtroom thriller and a family drama, a journey into the mysteries of human relationships and the question of how well we can ever know another human being.

Music Box is quite as thrilling as the same screen-writer Joe Eszterhas’s earlier courtroom thriller Jagged Edge (1985) but this time is comes with the bonus of having something urgent and important to say. The Oscar-nominated Lange and Mueller-Stahl are tremendous in spectacularly exciting performances.

It won the Golden Bear at Berlin in 1990, though tied with Larks on a String (1990).

Also in the cast are Frederic Forrest, Donald Moffat, Lukas Haas, Cheryl Lynn Bruce, Mari Töröcsik, Sol Frieder, JS Block, Elzbieta Czyzewska and Michael Rooker.

Music Box is written by Joe Eszterhas, Patrick Blossier, produced by Irwin Winkler, scored by Philippe Sarde and designed by Jeannine Claudia Oppewall.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6666

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com