Phil Spector: Trailer, certificate and where to watch
Al Pacino and Helen Mirren star as Spector and his lawyer in this dramatisation of his trial
Year: 2013
Certificate: 15
Al Pacino (Spector) and Helen Mirren (his attorney) make a very watchable pair in this high-grade, one-off TV movie written by Pulitzer-winner David Mamet (Glengarry Glen Ross). Pacino is on suitably outlandish form as the record producer accused of murder, while Mirren - a replacement for Bette Midler, who was carried off set with a back injury - is superb as his lawyer Linda Kenney Baden.
The case itself had everything - a loaded gun, an attractive woman, copious amounts of alcohol, an American showbiz legend... and a tragic death, although the main focus of this £8million film is the intense relationship between the mogul and Kenney Baden during his first trial in 2007. And it's her, more than him, who ultimately becomes the main figure in the story.
'Kenney Baden thought Spector was facing jail when she first took instruction,' says Mirren. 'And she was battling flu, which grew into bronchial pneumonia. But she gradually builds a case that she believes might convince a jury.' And Mirren certainly built a convincing performance of the lawyer, too, one that remains mesmerising to watch.
Still, the drama caused huge controversy around its release on HBO in the US back in 2013, with Spector's wife Rachelle claiming it unfairly depicted her husband as 'a foul-mouthed megalomaniac', while the family of Lana Clarkson - the victim - said it gave undue weight to the theory that she took her own life. Mirren said that 'the piece as a whole is an amalgamation of imagination and reality, it's not a precise forensic representation of the 2007 trial.' Take from that what you will, but it's certainly a compelling piece of drama. (92 minutes)
