Domestic and professional tensions mount when a husband and wife work as opposing lawyers in a case involving a woman who shot her husband.
When a woman attempts to kill her uncaring husband, prosecutor Adam Bonner gets the case. Unfortunately for him, his wife Amanda, also a lawyer, decides to defend the woman in court. Amanda uses everything she can to win the case, Adam gets angry about it, and their perfect marriage is disturbed by daily petty squabbles.—Chris Makrozahopoulos <[email protected]>
Happily-married lawyers Adam and Amanda Bonner land on opposite sides in the courtroom after Doris Attinger is charged with the attempted murder of her philandering husband Warren. For assistant district attorney Adam, it's a straightforward case: the facts aren't in dispute and Doris took a shot at her husband after she caught him with his girlfriend. Amanda takes a different view, arguing that women are treated differently than men in the courts and that Doris should be set free. They do their best to keep their courtroom battles in the court and not at home, until they can't manage that.—garykmcd
"I want a wife. Not a competitor!" Adam's Rib (1949) by Ruth Gordon (screenplay) and Garson Kanin (screenplay) is a romantic comedy about the trial of a scorned housewife who shoots her cheating husband, and the happily-married attorneys who contentiously represent both of them. Themes of sexism, male-female equality, marital fidelity, protecting the home, and justifiable assault are woven throughout the comical and dramatic repartee of the pseudo-disintegrating legal coupling. At the heart of this story, aside from finding a balance between men and women, is the primary theme of what it takes to sustain a happy marriage. From the beginning, throughout the trial, and to the very end, Adam Bonner (Spencer Tracy) and Amanda Bonner (Katharine Hepburn) reveal small and big evidence of a marriage that is not only loving and strong, but has the grit and steel of two equally-determined partners who like being happily married, see themselves as more equal than not, and are willing to keep working at it in positive and loving ways--despite the battles--and without compromising their self-respect. The circus-like trial is a clever and fun way to not only promote the equality of the sexes, but to show how a loving couple can be put through their own trial and win.—T.B. Hayes
Married lawyers Adam and Amanda Bonner find themselves on opposite sides of the courtroom in this comedy. Adam is prosecuting a high-profile case in which a woman is accused of trying to murder her philandering husband. Amanda acts as her defense attorney, and the sparring begins.—Liza Esser <[email protected]>
Assistant District Attorney Adam Bonner is assigned to prosecute a woman who tries to shoot her unfaithful husband. The DA and Bonner both expect a quick win. But neither planned on Bonner's wife and fellow attorney, Amanda Bonner, of defending the woman on the basis of "equal rights under the law," which Ms. Bonner insists would vindicate a man who would try to kill the lover of his unfaithful wife. Ms. Bonner shows throughout the court case that the law and society treat women different from men, and that any person would resort to violence if pushed sufficiently far. Mr. Bonner insists that regardless, no individual can take the law into his or her own hands, or chaos would ensue.
