The best courtroom drama movies, from 12 Angry Men to Anatomy of a Fall

Best courtroom drama movies: AFI's top ten

The American Film Institute ranked these ten as the best of the genre.

• 1. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962): in 1930s Alabama, widowed lawyer Atticus Finch defends a Black man falsely accused of raping a white woman. Gregory Peck's performance made Finch a symbol of quiet moral courage.
• 2. 12 Angry Men (1957): eleven jurors are ready to convict a young man of murder, and one is not. Sidney Lumet's film takes place almost entirely in one room and shows reasonable doubt being built argument by argument.
• 3. Kramer vs. Kramer (1979): a father fights for custody of his son after his wife leaves and then returns. It won the Academy Award for Best Picture and treats a family court case with rare tenderness.
• 4. The Verdict (1982): Paul Newman plays an alcoholic Boston lawyer who takes a medical malpractice case he is expected to settle. His closing argument is a lesson in restraint.
• 5. A Few Good Men (1992): a young Navy lawyer defends two Marines charged with killing a fellow Marine. Its climax, in which Tom Cruise questions Jack Nicholson's colonel, is one of the most famous cross-examinations on film.
• 6. Witness for the Prosecution (1957): Billy Wilder adapts Agatha Christie's story of an ailing barrister defending a man accused of murder. Charles Laughton and Marlene Dietrich anchor one of the genre's great twists.
• 7. Anatomy of a Murder (1959): James Stewart defends an army officer who admits to killing the man he says assaulted his wife. Otto Preminger's film is unusually frank and leaves questions of guilt open.
• 8. In Cold Blood (1967): based on Truman Capote's book about the murder of a Kansas family, it follows the killers through arrest, trial and execution, and makes the legal process itself the drama.
• 9. A Cry in the Dark (1988): Meryl Streep plays Lindy Chamberlain, the Australian mother accused of murdering her baby after saying a dingo took her. It shows how public opinion can try a case before the jury does.
• 10. Judgment at Nuremberg (1961): an American judge presides over the trial of four German judges who enforced Nazi laws. Stanley Kramer's film asks how ordinary officials become complicit.

Three more courtroom dramas worth adding

These films came later or fall just outside the AFI ten, but they belong in any conversation about the genre.

• My Cousin Vinny (1992): an inexperienced New York lawyer defends his cousin on a murder charge in Alabama. It is a comedy, but lawyers often praise its handling of evidence and cross-examination.
• Philadelphia (1993): a lawyer fired after his firm learns he has AIDS sues for discrimination. Tom Hanks won the Academy Award for Best Actor, and Denzel Washington plays the reluctant lawyer who takes the case.
• Anatomy of a Fall (2023): a writer is tried for the death of her husband, and their young son becomes a key witness. Justine Triet's French drama won the Palme d'Or and the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

What makes a great courtroom drama

The best ones use the trial to test people rather than just to deliver a verdict. 12 Angry Men is about how prejudice shapes judgment. To Kill a Mockingbird is about integrity in a rigged system. Anatomy of a Fall is about how little anyone outside a marriage can know.

They also make the rules clear. You do not need legal training to follow a good courtroom film, because the drama comes from watching characters use those rules under pressure.

Why we used the AFI list as a basis

AFI's 2008 poll asked film artists, critics and historians to choose the top films in ten genres, which makes it a stable, widely cited reference point. Its limit is age: nothing after 1992 made the courtroom list, which is why the final three entries are included.

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