Product Description

Music Box provides celebrated director Costa-gavras another opportunity to weave a story of nail-biting suspense with frightening political overtones. In this intense courtroom thriller, Chicago attorney Ann Talbot (Jessica Lange) agrees to defend her Hungarian immigrant father mike Laszlo (Armin Mueller-Stahl) against accusations of heinous war crimes committed 50 years earlier. As the trial unfolds, Ann probes for evidence that will not only establish his innocence, but also lay to rest her own agonizing doubts about his past. When a hospitalized witness is suddenly located in Budapest, the trial moves to her father's homeland. Here crucial testimony plus Ann's personal investigation lead to astonishing results.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15554 in DVD
• Brand: LANGE,JESSICA
• Released on: 2003-05-20
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 126 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
This 1989 drama penned by pre-Basic Instinct screenwriter Joe Eszterhas is a powerful tale of family identity and loyalty threatened by a ghost from the Third Reich. Jessica Lange stars as a Chicago criminal attorney whose beloved immigrant father (Armin Mueller-Stahl, in his American film debut) is accused of once having been a monstrous SS officer for Hitler. While Lange's character does a good job defending the old man in court against witnesses who charge him with numerous unspeakable acts, her own certainty that he is innocent slowly crumbles, leaving her with a horrifying personal dilemma. Directed by Costa-Gavras (Z), the film displays some of his distracting tendency toward unnecessarily broad storytelling, but Eszterhas's script is disciplined and moving, and Lange and Mueller-Stahl are stunning in their depiction of a loving relationship deeply shaken by history. --Tom Keogh

Customer Reviews

When the past comes knocking, it isn't always Teleflora
What if your Dad, the loving and beloved head of your middle-class American family, was suddenly charged with war crimes? This is the scenario for THE MUSIC BOX, a 1990 release, in which Jessica Lange plays a criminal defense lawyer asked by her widower father to defend him against such charges being brought by the US government on behalf of Hungary. The father, played by Armin Mueller-Stahl, is alleged to have committed multiple atrocities as an officer of a neo-Nazi police unit in Budapest during World War II. A complicating element is the father's vocal anti-communism, for which, he claims, the Red regime back in the old country is masterminding a frame-up. (Remember, we're talking about bad ol' days of the Cold War here.) Anyway, the Old Man needs a hotshot attorney, so his dutiful and devoted daughter takes the case.

Another reviewer has concluded that the plot is "far-fetched". Hmm. I would think that those aging American residents who've actually been charged with Nazi war crimes during the past couple of decades might not find it so far-fetched at all. Some have even been deported. Perhaps he's referring to the storyline that calls for the accused to be defended by his own offspring. OK, that probably wouldn't happen in real life. But, what is an otherwise idle Hollywood screenwriter to do when called upon to help fabricate a box office success?

The plot's arguable implausibility aside, both Lange and Mueller-Stahl give forceful and bravura performances as two people caught up in the fading echoes of receding history. The final scene between the two should have earned Lange that year's Oscar, but sadly didn't. There're also some quite good visual images of Budapest, which, at the end of the Cold War when this film was shot, was probably the Eastern Bloc's most beautiful capital city.

Notwithstanding that I've always been a little in love with Jessica Lange ever since TOOTSIE, I liked this film a lot. "They" say you can't go back. But, sometimes past history comes to visit uninvited.

Why is this Widescreen film in Full Screen format????
This film contains the best performance of Jessica Lange's auspicious career hands down. This was also American audiences introduction to the wonderful Armin Mueller-Stahl in the role of Lange's father. Thank goodness I saw this film on the big screen, and then later on the Widescreen Laserdisc. I have never seen this film panned and scanned, and i refuse to now, even though it has been released on DVD. So, unless Artisan Home Video intends on re-releasing this outstanding film in the correct 2.35:1 aspect ratio and in the 16x9 format, they are not getting my money.

Solid Entertaiment
Jessica Lange gives a great performance as the hungarian daughter who's father is accused of war crimes. Well plotted and suspensful, this film was overlooked at oscar time. It should have won a few.