Legal Eagles
Released 40 years ago, director Ivan Reitman's Legal Eagles is a little of everything. Part romance, part legal drama, part thriller, and part comedy, Reitman and screenwriters Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr. throw basically everything into the blender. The result is an entertaining, if a bit tonally Frankensteinish, movie that never quite clicked with audiences or critics.
Robert Redford stars as rising star Assistant District Attorney Tom Logan who gets pulled into looking into the story of Chelsea Deardon (Daryl Hannah), the daughter of a famous artist who was arrested while attempting to steal one of her father's paintings that shouldn't exist. Enticed by Chelsea's off-putting beauty and her lawyer's charm (Debra Winger), Tom Logan's life will never be the same.
Although we get legal scenes, and montages of office research, to establish both Tom and Laura's (Winger) differing styles as lawyers, none of these sequences really push the story forward as much as the pair investigating the truth of the missing paintings and the death of the man (Terence Stamp) who profited it based on evidence given them by a gruff cop (Brian Dennehy) with secrets of his own.
Although the film never becomes more than the sum of its parts, Legal Eagles does have several fun moments including Tom and Laura's banter, Chelsea making Tom uncomfortable, the gallery fire, Tom breaking into his own car to rescue Chelsea and Laura, the morning after, and Tom tap dancing in the wee hours of the morning while eating ice cream and watching Singin' in the Rain.
Legal Eagles has been released on home video multiple times over the years on VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray and can currently be found on a number of streaming platforms. Even if it never quite comes together, the combination of Redford, Winger, and Hannah is still worth a look.
- Title: Legal Eagles
- IMDb: link
