Frank Galvin is a down on his luck Boston lawyer who has taken to drinking heavily. A friend takes pity on him and sends him the case of a woman who fell into a coma while giving birth. To cover up possible medical malpractice on the part of the Catholic hospital, the bishop authorises a settlement offer to the family. But Galvin wants greater justice and takes the case against the doctors and the Archdiocese to trial. Opposing him in the courtroom is star defence attorney Ed Concannon, who sets about making sure that Galvin’s main witness disappears. Meanwhile, Galvin gets unexpected moral support when he meets an attractive woman in a bar … “My God, you are such a beautiful woman”, Paul Newman says to Charlotte Rampling over their first drink. Even in the film version of Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely (1975), Rampling played a role that might have gone to Lauren Bacall in the Humphrey Bogart era. Here, in Sidney Lumet’s courtroom drama, she embodies the type to perfection. A mysterious beauty, who is at once cool and aloof, while at the same time using her bedroom eyes in a way that leaves a man at her mercy.