My Cousin Vinny
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My Cousin Vinny is a 1992 American movie, released on Friday, 13 March, starring Joe Pesci and Marisa Tomei. Tomei won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her performance. The cast also includes Ralph Macchio, Fred Gwynne, Lane Smith, and Bruce McGill.
Plot
While driving through the fictitional Beechum County, Alabama (as the song Way Down South plays), Billy Gambini (Ralph Macchio) and his friend Stan Rothenstein (Mitchell Whitfield) accidentally neglect to pay for a can of tuna fish after stopping at the 'Sac-o-Suds' convenience store. After they leave the store, the clerk is shot and killed by two similar looking men. Billy and Stan are then pulled over and detained in connection with the murder. They are taken to the fictitional town of Wazoo. However, Billy and Stan assume they were detained for shoplifting, so they behave guiltily and manage to indirectly implicate themselves in the shooting. Due to circumstantial evidence and a series of miscommunications, Billy ends up being charged with murder, and Stan is charged as an accessory to the crime. The pair calls Billy's mother, who tells her son that there is an attorney in the family, who would be willing to take the case. Unfortunately, Billy's cousin 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 the trial judge, Chamberlain 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 a leather jacket and without a tie, Vinny is thrown into jail for contempt of court after failing to enter a plea and behaving disrespectfully toward the judge. On his second appearance in court, Vinny 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 stupid, incompetent, or liars, and they all swear that they saw Billy and Stan at the crime scene. As these claims go unquestioned, it appears that the prosecution has an airtight case that will inevitably lead to a conviction at the trial. Meanwhile, Vinny's inability to get a good night's sleep at the poor accommodations he finds, coupled with his own stubborn and proud refusal to accept the help of his fiancée, Mona Lisa Vito (Marisa Tomei), further impair his performance.
After Vinny's poor showing at the hearing, Billy and Stan decide to fire Vinny and hire the public defender, John Gibbons (Austin Pendleton). Vinny asks his cousin for one more chance to prove himself in court, and Billy reluctantly agrees. The trial then opens with Vinny representing Billy and the public defender representing Stan. Vinny manages to again draw the ire of the judge by showing up late and wearing a gaudy second-hand suit (because his new suit accidentally fell in the mud). After again being cited for contempt, Vinny sleeps through the prosecutor's opening statement. With nothing prepared and no idea what the jury has already heard, Vinny makes a brief opening statement: "Everything that guy just said is bull-shit. Thank you." The DA, Jim Trotter III (Lane Smith) objects on the ground that Vinny's entire statement is argumentative, and the judge sustains it, striking everything but "Thank you" from the record. However, it turns out that Stan's attorney suffers from a serious case of stage fright and delivers an inept, stuttering opening statement that is short on content and makes the jury uncomfortable. He again missteps when cross-examining Sam Tipton (Maury Chaykin), the first prosecution witness. Stan's attorney asks questions that Tipton easily answers, which serves to strengthen the case against Billy and Stan. Vinny at last manages to do something right, as he asks a devastating series of questions while presenting an alternate theory of the crime. After Tipton admits that he may have been mistaken in his testimony, Stan dismisses the public defender and declares that he wants Vinny to represent him.
As the trial goes on, Vinny continues to expose the weaknesses in the district attorney's case. The second witness, Ernie Crane (Raynor Scheine), swears he recognized the defendants and their car even though he was looking through several obstacles. After calling attention to the "rusty, dusty, dirty" screen on Crane's window and the large amount of foliage in the middle of his view of the convenience store, Vinny gets the witness to acknowledge that he may have merely noticed "two guys in a green convertible," consistent with Vinny's theory that the crime was perpetrated by two similar-looking men in a similar car. The third witness, Constance Riley (Paulene Myers), has horrible vision yet still swears that she recognized the defendants as the murderers. However, after Vinny shows that she can't see well enough to tell how many fingers he is holding up across the courtroom, half the distance from her house to the crimescene, she admits that she wasn't able to see well enough to positively identify the defendants.
Finally, Vinny's greatest success is made possible by evidence photographed by his fiancée Mona Lisa Vito, whom he unveils by calling her as a defense expert witness to refute George Wilbur (James Rebhorn), the surprise forensic evidence expert for the prosecution. After Wilbur testifies that his chemical analysis linked the tire marks from the crimescene with the rubber on Billy's car's tires, Lisa's climactic testimony reveals that the vehicle used in the getaway could not have been the defendants' because the suspension of their Buick Skylark could not have made the even tire marks that she photographed earlier. Finally, when the sheriff discovers that two men who look like Billy and Stan were arrested in Georgia while driving a Pontiac Tempest consistent with Lisa's testimony and possessing a handgun of the same caliber used in the murder, the DA drops all the charges.
Trivia
In a book called Reel Justice, the authors point out that Vinny did not have to depend on Lisa testifying as an expert on automobiles. This is due to the fact that, because 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, this would explain why he didn't know he could do this.Andrew Dice Clay was originally offered the role of Vinny, and originally considered for the same part were Robert De Niro and Danny DeVito.[[Citing sources citation needed]]
External links
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