philadelphia movie review

Philadelphia

More than a decade after AIDS was first identified as a disease, “Philadelphia” marks the first time Hollywood has risked a big-budget film on the subject. No points for timeliness here; made-for-TV docudramas and the independent film “ Longtime Companion ” have already explored the subject, and “Philadelphia” breaks no new dramatic ground. Instead, it relies on the safe formula of the courtroom drama to add suspense and resolution to a story that, by its nature, should have little suspense and only one possible outcome.

And yet “Philadelphia” is quite a good film, on its own terms. And for moviegoers with an antipathy to AIDS but an enthusiasm for stars like Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington , it may help to broaden understanding of the disease. It’s a ground-breaker like “ Guess Who's Coming to Dinner ” (1967), the first major film about an interracial romance; it uses the chemistry of popular stars in a reliable genre to sidestep what looks like controversy.

The story involves Hanks as Andrew Beckett, a skillful lawyer in a big, old-line Philadelphia law firm. We know, although at first the law firm doesn’t, that Beckett has AIDS. Visits to the clinic are part of his routine. Charles Wheeler , the senior partner ( Jason Robards ) hands Beckett a case involving the firm’s most important client, and then, a few days later, another lawyer notices on Beckett’s forehead the telltale lesions of the skin cancer associated with AIDS.

Beckett is yanked off the case and informed he doesn’t have a future with the firm. He suspects he’s being fired for being sick.

He’s correct. (Wheeler, feeling somehow contaminated by association, barks to an associate, “He brought AIDS into our offices – into our men’s room!”) Beckett determines to take a stand, and sue the law firm. But his old firm is so powerful that no attorney in Philadelphia wants to take it on, until Beckett finally goes in desperation to Joe Miller (Denzel Washington), one of those lawyers who advertises on TV, promising to save your driver’s license.

Miller doesn’t like homosexuals, but agrees to take the case, mostly for the money and exposure. And then the story falls into the familiar patterns of a courtroom confrontation, with Mary Steenburgen playing the counsel for the old firm. (Her character has no appetite for what is obviously a fraudulent defense, and whispers “I hate this case!” to a member of her team.) The screenplay by Ron Nyswaner works subtly to avoid the standard cliches of the courtroom. Even as the case is progressing, the film’s center of gravity switches from the trial to the progress of Beckett’s disease, and we briefly meet his lover ( Antonio Banderas ) and his family, most especially his mother ( Joanne Woodward ), whose role is small but supplies two of the most powerful moments in the film. By the time the trial reaches its conclusion, the predictable outcome serves mostly as counterpoint for the movie’s real ending.

The film was directed by Jonathan Demme , who with Nyswaner finds original ways to deal with some of the inevitable developments of their story. For example, it’s obvious that at some point the scales will fall from the eyes of the Washington character, and he’ll realize that his prejudices against homosexuals are wrong; he’ll be able to see the Hanks character as a fellow human worthy of affection and respect. Such changes of heart are obligatory (see, for example, Spencer Tracy’s acceptance of Sidney Poitier in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”).

But “Philadelphia” doesn’t handle that transitional scene with lame dialogue or soppy extrusions of sincerity. Instead, in a brilliant and original scene, Hanks plays an aria from his favorite opera, one he identifies with in his dying state. Washington isn’t an opera fan, but as the music plays and Hanks talks over it, passionately explaining it, Washington undergoes a conversion of the soul. What he sees, finally, is a man who loves life and does not want to leave it. And then the action cuts to Washington’s home, late at night, as he stares sleeplessly into the darkness, and we understand what he is feeling.

Scenes like that are not only wonderful, but frustrating, because they suggest what the whole movie could have been like if the filmmakers had taken a leap of faith. But then the film might not have been made at all; the reassuring rhythms of the courtroom drama, I imagine, are what made this material palatable to the executives in charge of signing the checks.

“Philadelphia” is a good movie, and sometimes more than that, and the Hanks performance (which, after all, really exists outside the plot) is one of the best of the year. Sooner or later, Hollywood had to address one of the most important subjects of our time, and with “Philadelphia” the ice has been broken.

In a year or two, it will be time for another film to consider the subject more unblinkingly. This is a righteous first step.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

• Jason Robards as Charles Wheeler
• Charles Glenn as Kenneth Killcoyne
• Tom Hanks as Andrew Beckett
• Denzel Washington as Joe Miller
• Mary Steenburgen as Belinda Conine

Directed by

• Jonathan Demme

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Review/Film: Philadelphia; Tom Hanks as an AIDS Victim Who Fights the Establishment

By Janet Maslin

• Dec. 22, 1993

For a film maker who thrives on taking chances, "Philadelphia" sounds like the biggest gamble of all. As the first high-profile Hollywood film to take the AIDS plague seriously, Jonathan Demme's latest work has stubborn preconceptions to overcome as well as enormous potential to make waves. What it does not have, despite the fine acting and immense decency that give it substance, is much evidence of Mr. Demme's usual daring. Maybe that's not surprising: it isn't easy to leave fingerprints when you're wearing kid gloves.

Hollywood's past reluctance to take on AIDS isn't strictly a matter of cowardice. This subject, with all its anguished inevitability, does not easily lend itself to run-of-the-mill movie methods. If the theater has led the way, with works as different as "Jeffrey" and "Angels in America," it also has more freedom to experiment with format. Conventional wisdom has it that a big-budget film needs reassuring familiarity if it means to play at the multiplex, even if Mr. Demme proved otherwise with his bracingly tough "Silence of the Lambs."

If the dread-disease drama has often been relegated to television, there, too, AIDS has proved daunting: HBO's attention-getting "And the Band Played On" was a much more tepid undertaking than "Philadelphia" turns out to be. Unlike that obviously hamstrung dramatization, "Philadelphia" mostly succeeds in being forceful, impassioned and moving, sometimes even rising to the full range of emotion that its subject warrants. But too often, even at its most assertive, it works in safely predictable ways.

"Philadelphia," which has the year's most elegant and apt movie title, begins with great promise and with a reminder of what the unfettered Mr. Demme can do. A stirring montage of Philadelphia street life, accompanied by a mournfully beautiful new Bruce Springsteen song, offers a resounding sense of vitality and communal obligation. (The film is suffused with haunting music, with operatic arias used much too pointedly in several places and Neil Young's title song floating gently through its final scene.) Mr. Demme knows how to breathe both hope and frustration into the promise of brotherly love.

Soon afterward, Mr. Demme shows an equally impressive tact as he introduces Andrew Beckett, the lawyer played by Tom Hanks. First seen defending a construction company accused of spreading pestilent dust, Andrew is next shown visiting a clinic for AIDS treatment. The film attaches no fanfare to this information, and it spares the audience a melodramatic scene in which Andrew's AIDS is first diagnosed. Likewise, it presents his mother (Joanne Woodward) as determinedly brave and well aware of her son's situation. With these touches, the film promises not to exploit its subject in maudlin ways, and that is a promise it keeps.

Mr. Demme and his screenwriter, Ron Nyswaner, elect to dramatize their material by presenting AIDS as a cause as well as a personal calamity. So "Philadelphia" gives Andrew a tangible grievance. First, he is established as an ambitious, gung-ho young corporate lawyer. "Outstanding!" exclaims Andrew, upon hearing that the firm has landed an important account. Next, he is seen arousing suspicion among the firm's equally hearty senior partners. "What's that on your forehead, pal?" one of them asks, staring at a Kaposi's sarcoma lesion.

"Oh, that!" says Andrew, with the forced heartiness that hides his real nature, and as such is the habit of a lifetime. "I got whacked in the head with a racquetball." Nobody believes him.

When Andrew is summarily fired on a trumped-up charge of incompetence, the film gives him a mission: to sue his former firm for wrongful termination and to fight the bigotry faced by people with AIDS. Admirable as this is in the abstract, it steers the movie in exactly the wrong direction. "Philadelphia" winds up centered on the courtroom, devoting an inordinate amount of time to what should only have been this story's MacGuffin, a minor but galvanizing plot device. The courtroom scenes, which lack suspense and too often have a soapbox tenor, will not tell the audience anything it doesn't already know.

A much more interesting side of "Philadelphia" depicts the relationship between Andrew and Joe Miller (Denzel Washington), his anti-gay, ambulance-chasing lawyer. ("We take no cash unless we get cash justice for you," Joe informs one potential client.) Reluctant to take Andrew's case at first, and flaunting his fears and prejudices with his doctor and his wife, Joe changes gratifyingly during the course of the story. Mr. Hanks gives a brave, stirring, tremendously dignified performance as a man slowly wasting away. But Mr. Washington, who is also very fine as the small-minded shyster who becomes a crusading hero, has the better role.

It shouldn't have been that way. But Mr. Nyswaner's screenplay allows Andrew almost nothing in the way of individual characteristics. It makes him a gay Everyman whose love of opera -- awkwardly underscored in a scene that shows the audience how little it really knows about Andrew -- hardly qualifies as a distinctive trait. Andrew's domestic relationship with Miguel (Antonio Banderas) is presented so sketchily that it barely seems real.

The screenplay's tendency to evade and overgeneralize is not helped by the depiction of gay men as gentle souls, straight men as bigots, and Andrew's large family as a monolithic, enlightened entity. Andrew's father: "We're incredibly proud of you." Andrew's mother: "You get in there and you fight for your rights." Andrew: "Gee, I love you guys."

Most of "Philadelphia" is a lot better than that. Neither Mr. Demme's attention to detail nor his talent for tight, urgent storytelling has let him down. He has assembled a large, expertly cast group of actors to fill out the film's background, among them Ron Vawter as the law firm's one conscience-stricken partner, Jason Robards as its overbearing patriarch, Anna Deavere Smith as an astute paralegal and Robert Castle (the priest who is Mr. Demme's cousin, and the subject of his "Cousin Bobby") as Andrew's father.

Ms. Woodward is especially memorable in a brief but luminous appearance. And Mary Steenburgen has the potentially interesting role of a ruthless, sarcastic defense attorney determined to wear down a now-frail Andrew when he gets to the courtroom. But even here, the film pulls its punches. After conducting a particularly grueling cross-examination, Ms. Steenburgen is allowed to acquit herself by muttering "I hate this case!"

"Philadelphia" may be equivocal in its attitudes, but Mr. Demme will never make a film that lacks visual color. Tak Fujimoto, Craig McKay and Kristi Zea, who have collaborated with the director before as cinematographer, editor and production designer, respectively, give the film a warm, believable look and a vigorous pace. Mention should also be made of Carl Fullerton's makeup, which makes sure that Mr. Hanks's transformation from robust lawyer to visibly suffering AIDS patient will not soon be forgotten.

In the end, thanks to such effects and to the simple grace of Mr. Hanks's performance, this film does accomplish what it means to. "Philadelphia" rises above its flaws to convey the full urgency of its difficult subject, and to bring that subject home.

"Philadelphia" is rated PG-13 (Parents Strongly Cautioned). It includes mild profanity and brief nudity. Philadelphia Directed by Jonathan Demme; written by Ron Nyswaner; director of photography, Tak Fujimoto; edited by Craig McKay; music by Howard Shore; production designer, Kristi Zea; produced by Edward Saxon and Mr. Demme; released by Tri-Star Pictures. At the Gemini, Second Avenue and 64th Street, Manhattan. Running time: 119 minutes. This film is rated PG-13. Andrew Beckett . . . Tom Hanks Joe Miller . . . Denzel Washington Sarah Beckett . . . Joanne Woodward Charles Wheeler . . . Jason Robards Belinda Conine . . . Mary Steenburgen Miguel Alvarez . . . Antonio Banderas Bud Beckett . . . Robert Castle Bob Seidman . . . Ron Vawter Anthea Buton . . . Anna Deavere Smith

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Philadelphia Reviews

Tom Hanks is superb as a smart lawyer dying of AIDS who sues his former employers with the help of Denzel Washington, who matches Hanks' work note for note.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 29, 2024

Despite its weaknesses, Philadelphia can be enthralling and deeply moving at times.

Full Review | May 9, 2023

Graced with splendid performances, this often stirring drama not only has its heart in the right place; it delivers a strong, convincing portrait, as well as a lesson about decency in a story aptly set in the City of Brotherly Love.

Full Review | Dec 16, 2022

This is a movie that everyone should see. It is a very effective examination of these experiences during the early 90s.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 11, 2022

This is a very depressing story but one that is worth telling. The performances were top notch and it features the only Springsteen song I've ever enjoyed.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 11, 2022

Philadelphia certainly leans into melodrama. But its most impressive feat lies in its ability to also show queer people being happy and refusing to let other people’s prejudices ruin their self-perception.

Full Review | Oct 31, 2022

I couldn’t help wanting more from "Philadelphia," yet some part of me also wants to applaud it for having been made at all.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Aug 31, 2022

Philadelphia is a heartbreakingly mediocre movie. It’s dishonest, it’s often legally, medically, and politically inaccurate, and it breaks my heart that I must say it’s simply not good enough and I’d rather people not see it at all.

Full Review | Jun 3, 2022

Philadelphia is hardly a movie milestone, but it's actually quite limber for a film that has to carry such a heavy load on its shoulders.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 29, 2021

Every actor's contribution to the film is noteworthy, especially when Demme chooses to bestir them with intrusive camera angles and lingering scenes of emotional poignancy.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Sep 24, 2020

Filmmaker Jonathan Demme does an absolutely superlative job of establishing the film's various characters and their urban environs...

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 5, 2019

An important film not just from a cinematic perspective, but from a cultural one, bringing the AIDS crisis to the masses in a deeply human way, confronting and dispelling prejudices and misconceptions with major stars.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 7, 2019

Hanks and Washington (in a role that's unexpectedly comic) have rarely been better and use their considerable star power to obscure some of the movie's flaws.

Full Review | Original Score: 3'4 | Jan 30, 2019

Philadelphia, apart from having talented actors delivering remarkable performances, is a piece of history that anyone with a heart and a sense of justice can understand.

Full Review | Jun 9, 2018

Sparks of acting brilliance rescue the cautious, sometimes craven script, as does Demme's inventive direction. Though the plotting reeks of safety-first commercialism, the camerawork has the dangerous intimacy of independent film-making.

Full Review | Dec 12, 2017

Jonathan Demme's thoughtful human drama was certainly not the first movie to confront the AIDS crisis, but it was, even in the conventional skin of a courtroom drama, the most heartbreaking and passionate undertaking of its kind.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 14, 2015

Philadelphia may not be the film Demme's fans expect--its emotionalism is unfiltered by cool. But it has the power to open more than a few blinkered hearts.

Full Review | Mar 13, 2015

What remains most striking about Philadelphia may be the...conspicuous emphasis on intense close-ups. They force an inescapable emotional intimacy in relation to issues the mainstream, at least at the time, would rather have looked away from. [Blu-ray]

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | May 29, 2013

Moving, Oscared '90s drama fostered AIDS empathy.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 18, 2010

[An] extremely well-made message picture about tolerance, justice and discrimination is pitched at mainstream audiences, befitting its position as the first major Hollywood film to directly tackle the disease.

Full Review | Oct 10, 2008

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

Metacritic reviews

Philadelphia.

• 88 Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert And yet Philadelphia is quite a good film, on its own terms. And for moviegoers with an antipathy to AIDS but an enthusiasm for stars like Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington, it may help to broaden understanding of the disease.
• 88 ReelViews James Berardinelli ReelViews James Berardinelli The story is timely and powerful, and the performances of Hanks and Washington assure that the characters will not immediately vanish into obscurity.
• 80 Variety Todd McCarthy Variety Todd McCarthy On a scene-by-scene basis, in terms of performance and the grave issues under consideration, the film is quite absorbing.
• 75 TV Guide Magazine TV Guide Magazine Philadelphia fails to create complex characters or finely nuanced drama, but it succeeds in its real goal; the education of an audience whose thinking about AIDS and gay life has been shaped by notions of perversion and divine retribution.
• 70 The New York Times Janet Maslin The New York Times Janet Maslin In the end, thanks to such effects and to the simple grace of Mr. Hanks's performance, this film does accomplish what it means to. Philadelphia rises above its flaws to convey the full urgency of its difficult subject, and to bring that subject home.
• 70 The New Yorker Anthony Lane The New Yorker Anthony Lane The result is an unorthodox blend of courtroom drama and old-style weepie, and somehow it comes off. [23 Dec 1993]
• 67 Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten Still, Philadelphia is comprised of enough “little moments” that provide all the richness and grace we need to get us past the film's more inelegant moments. Primary here are the transcendent lead performances by Hanks and Washington, both of whom are, at all times, exciting to watch.
• 67 Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman But Philadelphia turns out to be a scattershot liberal message movie, one that ties itself in knots trying to render its subject matter acceptable to a mass audience.
• 60 Empire Angie Errigo Empire Angie Errigo For all its weaker aspects, it is to be recommended as a denunciation of intolerence made with understanding, compassion, and some humour.
• 10 Washington Post Washington Post Directed by Jonathan Demme, and starring Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington, this AIDS courtroom drama is so pumped full of nitrous oxide, you could get your teeth drilled on it.
• See all 21 reviews on Metacritic.com
• See all external reviews for Philadelphia

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Philadelphia Review

01 Jan 2001

125 minutes

Philadelphia

The first major Hollywood film with a gay rights theme, this is, inevitably, determinedly mainstream. In its appeal to the emotions, its showy dramatic role for Hanks and its purposeful courtroom fireworks between Washington and pitiless opposing trial lawyer Mary Steenburgen, it is conservatively designed to provide a general audience with something tasteful to chew on.

Always good company, the personable Hanks dons convincing cosmetic lesions and bravely wastes away before our eyes as AIDS victim Andrew Beckett, a going-down-fighting lawyer who is determined to have his day in court, exposing the prejudices and discriminatory practices of the prestigious law firm that fired him. Washington has the thornier role as the homophobic attorney who reluctantly presses his former adversary's lawsuit, alive to the personal significance of the issue despite his butchly over-emphatic aversion to homosexuals.

Part courtroom drama, the narrative engages one's sympathies and slyly grips with a falsely laid trail of tension: will head of the firm Jason Robards be goaded into doing a Jack Nicholson on the stand? Will the firm associate, whose conscience is clearly bothering him, break down or come out? More surprisingly, given director Demme's satirical bent and his usual shunning of sentimentality, this is also, in part, reminiscent of a disease of the week TV movie with the attendant mush portions that implies, as Hanks is cheered on by a Too Good To Be True support system of devoted lover Miguel (Antonio Banderas), indomitable mother (Joanne Woodward) and a Walton-like pack of kinfolk, supporting their relative to the teary end.

One suspects that those most personally and angrily concerned by the subject matter will be dissatisfied by the "If Only" niceness on display and the timidity with which Andy's relationship with Miguel and his lifestyle is (barely) drawn. But that's another movie. This one comes down — quite successfully — to a touching demand for fraternity and justice, and is at its most powerful when Andrew, like a rape victim put on the defensive, is subjected to an appealing ordeal on the stand, an intrusion into privacy aimed to shame him as a "deviant", and in its undeniably groundbreaking attempt to explore men's fearful and belligerent attitudes to their own sexuality

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