Primal Fear

A self proclaimed sucker for Courtroom drama's I can't believe I just now happened upon the psychological, twisted thriller, Primal. I was encouraged to watch this film by my psych professor after telling her how much I loved movies that dealt with court and practicing law. This film also has a strong psychological foundation as the suspected murder in the film Aaron (Edward Norton) after being psychologically accessed is found to suffer from Multiple personality disorders. After avidly denying his involvement of the killing of long time mentor and Arch Bishop Rushman, we began to believe that the innocent, soft spoken, well mannered southern boy Aaron is incapable of committing such a heinous crime. As a matter of fact, he's got everyone convinced including this hot shot defense attorney, Martin Gail (Richard Gere). It's about halfway through the film we began to see a completely different side of Aaron, while under psychoanalysis we began to find that Aaron suffers from multiple personality disorder, and that his "other personality", Roy, is indeed the one who killed the Arch Bishop. This leaves attorney Gail, at a loss as he can not change his plea to insanity mid trial. Though clearly Gail, along with the audience believes that the innocent Aaron is indeed insane and can not be held fully accountable for his actions. There are several other plot twists including lewd acts performed with Arron, another alter boy, another women and the arch bishop. All of which leads both attorneys, the judge, and the jury to believe that they are indeed dealing with an insane person. To make a long story short, Gail uses his savvy to help convince the jury and judge that Aaron needs psychological help, not to be sentenced to the death penalty. But not so fast, just when you think the movie has had it's final plot twist, it's then we find out that Aaron does not suffer from multiple personality disorder. That it was all part of his twisted scheme to get away with murder. Upon finding this out, Gail blankly walks into the distance as if almost to say that he has just fulfilled the worst prophecy about defense attorneys, they put murders back on the street.