The case involves lots of flaws in the original trial: unreliable eyewitnesses, time discrepancies, conflicts of interest. In other hands, this material might seem familiar, but Woods puts a spin on it, an intensity that makes it feel important - to him, and therefore to us. And in the obligatory courtroom showdown that ends the film, Woods is able to find new ways to handle all of those old cliches about the surprise witnesses and the dramatic last-minute revelations.
Watching the film, I was not particularly impressed by Downey as the idealistic young law graduate. He seemed sort of indistinct, and I wondered why. Downey gave one of the best performances of recent years in "Less Than Zero" as a self-destructing drug abuser. What was missing here? A few days after seeing "True Believer," I saw Downey again, in "Chances Are," where he carries the movie effortlessly and with grace.
Seeing that second fine performance, I began to get an angle on Woods: He's the kind of actor who has such high voltage, who's so wound up, that maybe a younger actor tends to defer. We've all had that feeling of being in a conversation with someone else who has seized the advantage and kept it. Maybe working with Woods gives you the same feeling; it takes an improvisational veteran like James Belushi, his co-star in "Salvador," to match his pace.
If you run Woods' best performances through your memory - the ones I've mentioned, and "The Onion Field," "Against All Odds" and "Once Upon a Time in America" - you see a certain pattern emerging. Woods doesn't like dumb movies, and he doesn't like to play dumb characters.
In the season of the Idiot Plot (the plot that doesn't work unless everyone in it is an idiot), Woods makes movies in which the audience has to be on its toes to keep up with him. It's quite an act, and when I see Woods on the screen in the first shot of a movie I sort of smile to myself because I know that something strange and offbeat and maybe even inspired is about to happen.
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