Looking at director Gregory Hoblit’s filmography (Fallen, Frequency, Fracture), it’s hard to not notice this man has a type and it’s not just movies starting with the letter F. Hoblit worked in the bygone era of original dramatic thrillers with storylines that occasionally bumped elbows with the horror genre. None more so than his 1996 feature debut, Primal Fear.
The film followed seemingly conscience free hot shot defense lawyer with an axe to grind, Martin Vail (Richard Gere). Vail takes on the case of altar boy Aaron (Edward Norton), who’s caught damn near red handed having allegedly brutally murdered a Catholic archbishop. Vail takes on the case because he knows it will give him the attention he craves and thereby another middle finger to the establishment that he feels wronged him. In other words, he’s driven by more than is on the surface but less than a noble cause.
Before he darkened Aaron’s doorstep, Vail was used to not caring whether or not the person he’s defending was innocent. He’s just doing his job and he believes in the rule that everyone is innocent until proven guilty. Well, isn’t it ironic (don’t you think?), that the one time the evidence seems so insurmountable even he can’t see a path to victory….he truly believes his client is innocent.
As the details of the case and Aaron’s mental issues become clear, so do the horrors of the crime at hand, the motive, and how our own ambitions can be used against us when in the company of evil. This is as far as you can read without having the movie spoiled and I beg of you; do not let this one be spoiled. It’s available on Paramount+ right now.
Primal Fear is one of those movies that left me pacing the room with my hand over my mouth like someone just dissed me at a rap battle. Meanwhile, my DVD tray unceremoniously spat out the disc on its janky plastic levers, presenting it to me as if to insinuate I was being dramatic. I wasn’t. If anything, that little plastic piece of shit needed to get on my level. I’ve never been so in my face duped by a singular acting performance the way Edward Norton just did me. We’re so focused on how damn cool Richard Gere is (I mean the guy could sell a ketchup popsicle to a woman in white gloves) that we completely let the devil waltz right through the front gate.
The devil, in this case, was Edward Norton’s Aaron. Norton is at times playing footsie with the idea of overacting with his accent and “aw, shucks” innocence but it works and you just feel terrible for the kid. Then you learn his story; that he was, in his own words, “begging” on the street when the church took him in. Then we find out that the archbishop was sexually assaulting him, his girlfriend, and his friends; even making them film pornos for him in the name of God. Now, this kid, in part because of all this trauma, allegedly experiences black outs on the regular. The latest one ending in him waking up covered in the archbishop’s blood and being chased down by the police.
The story would lead you to believe we’re about to watch Vail pay the piper for all his sins by having to watch the one client he cared for in sweet innocent Aaron receive the death penalty as he helplessly looks on. Or maybe Vail would pull off a heartfelt miracle and win the day all while learning his lesson. Not to be.
After a fascinating court case that has everything from Frasier’s dad (the amazing John Mahoney) as a crooked Attorney General getting verbally punched in the throat while everyone in the courtroom is forced to awkwardly watch the archbishop’s sex tape collection, we finally learn the truth of it all. And it’s that human beings can be so damn evil that even the thought of walking amongst them sends a shiver up your spine; that evil can stare you right in the face, manipulate you, and use your entire personality against you. And it wouldn’t even be all that complicated. The beauty of Primal Fear is that Edward Norton doesn’t just trick Richard Gere. He tricks us. Right to our faces, while hiding in plain sight.
Backing up a moment, we learn midway through the film that Aaron’s “spells” where he blacks out are actually moments in which his other personality, “Roy” takes over. Roy is the person Aaron’s mind created to stand up for him in a way he never could during all those years of abuse. Roy is Brad Pitt in Fight Club after he’s been drinking green tea all day. Every movement he makes is with violent intent. To put it bluntly, he’s scary as shit. Even at this point, this is already an all-time performance by Edward Norton. He’s hit absolute polar opposites in a single character in a way that rivals any performance I’ve ever seen….and he isn’t finished. Vail tosses a hail mary by putting Aaron on the stand with the intent of poking-the-murder-bear and goading Roy out of Aaron. It works all too well as Roy jumps over the stand and takes Vail’s lady friend and ferocious prosecuting lawyer Janet (Laura Linney in another absolutely perfect bit of casting) hostage, threatening to snap her neck. She survives and he’s incapacitated but the picture has been painted. Aaron has a split personality named Roy who violently murdered the archbishop. Aaron was found guilty by insanity and would be going to a mental hospital for a little while as opposed to the death chair. Everybody wins. Until they don’t.
As Vail comes to Aaron’s cell to give him the good news and a hug goodbye, Aaron slips up for the first time when he says that he hopes the lawyer’s neck is okay, proving that he was in fact aware of what he was doing while under the guise of Roy. You can see Vail’s world come crashing down on him as Aaron starts clapping sarcastically once he realizes he gave himself away. He reveals that Aaron never really existed and he’s actually been Roy (personality wise) the entire time. The one who not only murdered the archbishop but his innocent girlfriend who’d been missing for the duration of the trial.
The dance with the devil that Norton and Gere pull off in this scene is just the cherry on top of an amazingly written movie that kept us looking for an answer that was right under our noses. Norton’s sheer glee in unburdening himself with the truth; Gere physically shaking off the cold chills crawling up his spine knowing he’d helped not only set a killer free but a killer that would likely manipulate others and kill again.
Vail was forced to come face to face with a fear that he’d managed to elude up to this point, masking it with ambition in the name of revenge. The fear that he was helping evil people walk free amongst us. There was no hiding from it in this scene and you can see it in his face. And again, we feel it too because we as an audience were also duped, leaving us with an uneasy feeling in our stomachs when we realize… it wasn’t even all that hard to do.
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