The Justice Game (1989)

Overview

More straightforward than DEAD HEAD, THE JUSTICE GAME finds Dennis Lawson's Glasgow laywer Dominic Rossi as another cynic who discovering how things are really run behind the curtains. Busy on the high-profile case of two footballers in a fracas with father-and-son hooligans, Rossi misses the desperate call from the subsequently-murdered Sandowski (CALLAN's Russell Hunter), an accountant who did a runner rather than testify against one of Rossi's clients. Rossi hires a PI friend to look into Sandowski's more recent past while he ends up taking on a case that is closely-related: the defense of an ex-army man (GAME OF THRONES' Ron Donachie) suspected to be behind a series of vigilante firebombings of the urban poor. It is quite obvious to the audience well before Rossi that everything ties back to a mysterious merchant-banking firm run by a wonderfully glowering Michael Kitchen (OUT OF AFRICA) while FLAWLESS lurks around in the shadows, so the suspense comes from just when and how Rossi will make that connection (and how many of his allies will be killed before he does). More interesting than the case itself is the film's depiction of a yuppie world in which characters variously have issues with justifying their enjoyment of the high life when their work involves them with those less fortunate (Rossi and underground newspaper friend Gerry [Hilton McRae, GREYSTOKE] are former student revolutionaries who hang out in gentrified businesses that were once the greasy spoons of their youth). Among the familiar faces in the first series are LAIR OF THE WHITE WORM's Paul Brooke, BRIDGET JONES' DIARY's Celia Imrie, and SYMPTOMS' Lorna Heilbron.