4. Primal Fear
In his stunning film debut, Edward Norton plays Aaron Stampler, a Kentucky-born stuttering altar boy who’s accused of murdering Chicago’s beloved Archbishop. Martin Vail (Richard Gere) is a high-stakes attorney who loves the limelight and, realizing the media bonanza this case will bring, agrees to defend Aaron pro bono.
Vail soon believes in Aaron’s innocence, thinking the kid has been set up by local businessmen who lost millions of dollars due to the Archbishop’s policies and also discovers evidence that Aaron and a young lady were abused by the Archbishop. During an argument about the case, Aaron suddenly snaps into a different person, calling himself “Roy” and admitting to the murder of the Archbishop but then going back to normal to claim he knows nothing. A psychiatrist diagnoses Aaron as a multiple personality case but Vail is wary of an insanity plea. It turns out to be moot as during a harsh examination by the D.A., Aaron snaps back into Roy and tries to strangle the woman. The judge throws the case out and has Aaron placed in a mental institution while the Archbishop’s crimes (which the city leaders have been hiding for years) come to light.
Meeting his client one last time, Martin is about to leave but when Aaron asks about the D.A.’s neck, Martin realizes he couldn’t remember it if he blacked out when becoming Roy. After a pause, Aaron starts to clap and reveals that he had been faking the entire insanity plea to get away with killing the Archbishop as revenge for his years of abuse. When Martin notes that there never was a Roy, Norton laughs that he has it wrong. “There never was an Aaron.” He gloats how the two won as Martin just stumbles out, stunned to realize he let a psychotic killer skate by. Norton earned a well-deserved Oscar nomination for selling as brilliant a twist as you’ll ever see in movies.
Discussion about this post