Great movies with bad scenes

So, beloved and I are watching the movie North Country last night. What a powerful movie. Having grown up in small-town America, where women weren't always treated as human beings, I felt more than a little shame at how the main characters were treated. I'm not sure how much of the movie was fact and how much was fiction; whatever was fictional was certainly believable to me, to my shame and dismay.

That is, until the final courtroom scene. The main character was being slandered right and left by the defense, all too believable, unfortunately, knowing how these things tend to work. But when the plaintiff's attorney, played by Woody Harrelson, rose to question Charlize Theron's main persecutor, something horrible happened: they movie-fied it!

I'm no screenwriter, and certainly don't have the talent to become a movie director, but COME ON ALREADY! I know enough about courtroom proceedings to know that the dramatic, over-zealous assault on a hostile witness is simply not allowed by any defense attorney or judge worth a tinker's damn, and no witness is going to be so emotionally overcome by a big ol' meanie attorney that they'll admit the truth and perjure themselves. It just don't happen, folks!

But we weren't done when Woody finally got the confession he wanted. Oh, no, we need a good 2 or 3 minutes of addressing the visitors' gallery during the questioning phase of the trial. (the line I expected, but never got, goes something like this: "Is there a question in here somewhere, Counselor?") AND THEN we gotta have the big Hollywood reversal of fortune: those terrified co-plaintiffs who wouldn't join the class action before Woody's big temper tantrum suddenly grow a spine and literally stand up to the big, mean corporation and its attorney (who just happens to be a woman, ironically).

I don't want to make it sound like I consider the historic and societal aspects of North Country unimportant; they most definitely are not. What was done (and continues to happen in some places) to women in the workplace was obscene. But just once I'd like Hollywood to stay out of its own way. Seems to me that the whole point is to tell the story so well that I never think, "oh yeah, it's a movie we're watching here."

Scott