Brave. That word describes every person in the crew and every cast member, including their family members, who agreed to make this Roe v. Wade. Okay, insane also. Brave and insane.
In just under two hours, they have laid down the gauntlet in front of the Hollywood Woke Elite. This is a very real, very disturbing film about abortion and the corrupt nature in which it was allowed to be passed into law. I’m no law expert. I have never read a John Grisham novel. I also have never watched an episode of ‘Law and Order’. I can confirm that these two things will be absolutes in my life. I didn’t watch this move with any kind of preconceived notion of the case.
I have always known about the case, just none of the details. Rightly so, I live in Democratically controlled California and if it wasn’t taught to me in the public school system, I wasn’t keen on seeking out legal dissertations on decades old court cases.
I won’t bore you with the facts of the case, except to say that it was set into motion when a young woman, Norma McCorvey became pregnant with her third child. Unable to properly care for any more children, she was encouraged to lie and say that she was raped so that she could receive an abortion, which was illegal in Texas in 1969, except in such instances. She was introduced to two young, female attorneys, Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington who took on the case.
In the end, the decision to legalize abortion was granted and the Texas abortion ban was deemed unconstitutional.
The film follows Dr. Bernard Nathanson, a gynecologist, who helped to usher in the ability for women to legally have an abortion. Together, with Lawrence Lader, a political strategist and an atheist who saw abortion as a way of correcting the errors of contraceptive failure while limiting population growth, they manipulated the entire country with false stats and used each other as sources in op-eds on the subject of abortion. In their early days together, Nathanson and Lader, looked to create a thriving business as there seemed to be no shortage of women who were looking to find simple solutions to a challenge problem. They are cold and callous when discussing how to make their business grow, strategizing on how they can speed up the process.
Depending on your outlook on abortion, you truly do hate Dr. Nathanson for much of this movie as he calmly narrates his good fortunes in performing all of these abortions.
I really liked this movie. That does not make this a perfect movie, however. Where ‘Roe v. Wade’ falls short, is in the script. Many scenes were so heavy-handed with dialogue that felt more preachy than informative. They felt written, they didn’t feel natural. While that’s my only gripe, it’s sort of a big one because there were moments where I was taken out of the film because of the heavy-handedness.
It’s important to note that not all of the scenes were like that and ‘Roe v. Wade’ is very much a movie worth watching. Directors Nicholas Loeb and Cathy Allyn deserve a ton of credit for not holding back any punches. Clearly, they are passionate about this subject and there are several holy-shit-did-they-just-show-that moments that outweigh any shortcomings I might have found with the script. We have discussed on ‘The Unoffendable’, how donuts automatically start off at ‘commendable’. Pizza is that way too, except in one scene in which a pepperoni is peeled off of the coagulated cheese.
That’s all I’ll say, but it made for a great “oh shit” moment as I applauded the courage it took to shoot and edit that scene that way. There are zero punches pulled and I, for one, appreciated the hell out of that.
Until I had seen this film, I didn’t know who Dr. Bernard Nathanson was. I’m going to assume that the same will be true for most of the people who read this review. There is a revelation near the end of the film, that is so gut-wrenching that I ended up not hating the doctor, but felt a deep sense of sadness and empathy for him.
I’ve seen reviews where people have ravaged Loeb for his directing prowess, basically implying that he had none. The ability to generate actual human emotion after watching a film, is a true sign of a good director. I legitimately felt like trash after watching this movie, but because I felt I had been duped by this whole case. I felt terrible for Dr. Nathanson. I felt terrible for Norma McCorvey, the single-mom who started all of this.
Nicholas Loeb and Cathy Allyn, along with their entire cast and crew, have created a movie in ‘Roe v. Wade’ that will haunt you long after you finish watching it.
For more information on this film: www.roevwademovie.com
CAST / Character
- Jon Voight – Justice Burger
- Nick Loeb – Dr. Bernard Nathanson
- Robert Davi – Justice Brennan
- Stacey Dash – Dr. Mildred Jefferson
- Jamie Kennedy – Larry Lader
- Joey Lawrence – Robert Byrn
- Cobin Bernsen – Justice Blackmun
- Steve Guttenberg – Justice Powell
- Greer Grammar – Sarah Weddington
- Wade Williams – Justice Rehnquist
- Mindy Robinson – Ellen McCormack
- Richard Portnow – Justice Douglas
- William Forsythe – Justice Stewart
- Justine Wachsberger – Linda Coffee
- Tom Guiry – Father James T. McHugh
- Chris Lemmon – Phil McCombs
- Octavius Prince – Cyril Means
- Alveda King – Guthrie Jefferson
- Jessica Sefaty – Sandy Ryer
- Roger Stone – Washington Post Reporter
Review by James Pringle who is also a co-host of the Podcast The Unoffendable.
