My Cousin Vinny
From Free net encyclopedia
Template:Infobox Film My Cousin Vinny is a 1992 American movie, released on Friday, March 13, starring Joe Pesci and Marisa Tomei. Tomei won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance. The cast also includes Ralph Macchio, Fred Gwynne, Lane Smith, and Bruce McGill.
Plot
While driving through Alabama, Vinny's nephew, Billy Gambini and his friend have been charged with murder in Alabama due to circumstantial evidence and various miscommunications, especially when they foolishly fail to ask what are they were arrested for, assuming it was for shoplifting, until they implicated themselves. When they finally realize the truth, they call Billy's mother who tells them that Cousin Vinny would be willing to take the case. Unfortunately, Vincent LaGuardia Gambini (Joe Pesci), better known as Vinny, is a neophyte personal injury lawyer from Brooklyn, New York, newly admitted to the bar (after six attempts) and has no trial experience.
Although Vinny manages to fool Judge Haller (Fred Gwynne) about being experienced enough to take the case, his actual ignorance of basic court procedures gets him into trouble immediately much to his clients' consternation. For example, after appearing before the judge at the arraignment in his nephew's (Ralph Macchio) murder case in a leather jacket without a tie, Vinny is thrown into jail for failing to enter a plea of "not guilty" for his nephew and friend and for not giving the judge due respect. On his second appearance before the same judge Vinny Gambini does not even bother to cross-examine any witnesses in the probable cause hearing. To make things worse, the three eyewitnesses turn out to be dumb, backwarded liars who swear they saw Vinny's nephew and his friend at the crime scene. The fact he cannot get a good night's sleep with all the poor accommodations he finds and his own stubbornly prideful refusal to accept the help of his fiancée, Mona Lisa Vito, further impairs his performance. His nephew and his friend decide to hire the public defender, but they quickly realize that he is completely incompetent while Vinny begins to show some talent as he becomes accustomed to the demands of the trial.
Vinny's strengths comes to the fore during the trial when his cross-examination techniques expose the weaknesses in the prosecutor's case such as totally discrediting the eyewitnesses with dramatic effectiveness (Vinnie forces the first witness, Sam Tipton, to admit he lied that he cooked his grits breakfast in five minutes instead of the required twenty minutes, not giving the defendants enough time to finish shopping and leave before the real murderers came; the second witness, Constance Riley, is a blind woman who still swears she recognised the defendants as the murderers until Vinny proves her glasses are no good anymore; the third witness, Mr. Crane, swears he recognised the defendants and the car even though he was looking through several obstacles). Of course, his greatest success would not have been possible without evidence photographed by his fiancée Mona Lisa Vito (Marisa Tomei), which he unveils by calling her as a defense expert witness to refute the surprise forensic evidence expert for the prosecution. Lisa's climactic testimony reveals her obscure, yet encyclopedic automotive knowledge to prove that the defendants couldn't have been the killers, placing a different automobile at the scene of the crime. When the sheriff discovers that the more likely actual killers with the kind of car matching Mona's conclusion and the murder weapon have been arrested, the prosecutor dismisses the case.
Trivia
In the book, Reel Justice, the authors point out that Vinny did not have to depend on Mona testifying as an expert on automobiles. This is because since Vinny is an experienced mechanic himself and had no way of knowing that expertise would be relevant to the trial before it started, the rules of court would have allowed him to take the stand himself and deliver the same testimony. Of course, given that Vinny did not know that he could cross-examine the witnesses in the probable cause hearing, or that the DA had to share evidence with him would explain why he didn't know he could do this.