“A Fall from Grace” is a film that was directed by Tyler Perry. It was released on January 17th, 2020.The movie starts off with Jordan, a police officer telling an elderly lady to come off the roof and she keeps repeating that “she has nothing” and he keeps trying to comfort her, but she jumps and commits suicide. The story then goes to Jordan coming home to his wife Jasmine who we later learn is a public defender attorney. Jasmine goes to the office the next day and her boss Rory gives her a case of Grace Waters a woman who allegedly murdered her husband, Shannon Delong. Jasmine is pleading with her boss to give the case to someone else, but Rory says that she is doing it, that Grace is adamant about pleading guilty, that plea deals are Jasmine’s strength, and that there is numerous evidence that proves that Grace is guilty. But the more Jasmine starts reading into the case she realizes that a couple of pieces are missing including Shannon’s body. And she believes that Grace is innocent. Jasmine, therefore, sets out to uncover more details. Grace tells Jasmine about the night the alleged murder happened. It started with Grace and Shannon getting into an argument because Shannon was doing the deed with another woman in their bed. That was her breaking point Shannon had already robbed Grace of all her money, got her fired from her job at the bank due to secretly taking out her money, and had mortgaged her house therefore putting it in foreclosure. The argument got heated and Grace hit Shannon with a baseball bat a lot of times and then pushed him down the stairs. She then drove into a deserted area and told her best friend Shannon that she had just murdered her husband. Sarah then says later that she saw Grace’s son Malcolm coming out the house after the murder and since Shannon’s body is missing Sarah says that Malcolm hid it. At the trial Jasmine calls Sarah as a witness which backfires due to the numerous calls between Grace and Sarah the night of the alleged murder and that Sarah admits that Grace told her that she had murdered Shannon. Jasmine ultimately loses her case and defense, and the jury deems that Grace is guilty. Jasmine felt hopeless so she decided to stop by Sarah house which is a residence for elderly women and discovers an elderly woman named Alice. Alice wants to leave the house and reveals that women have died at Sarah’s house. Meanwhile Jordan runs a background check and realizes that Sarah has a criminal record, so he goes to tell Jasmine, but she isn’t picking up her phone, so he goes to Sarah house to see if she saw her. Sarah says she hasn’t, but Jordan calls the Jasmine phone again and realizes that the Jasmine phone is ringing from the basement. Jasmine has discovered that there are a bunch of elderly women locked up in the basement and she is therefore kidnapped by Sarah. Jordan then bursts in through the door, gets into a physical altercation with Sarah, he then handcuffs her, then goes looking for Jasmine but somehow Sarah escapes still. Jordan then runs into Shannon who is not dead, and Jordan shoots him while Jasmine tries to escape. Shannon is assumed to be actually dead this time. They escape and Grace goes back to court and has one last trial where it is revealed that Sarah and Shannon are actually mother and son and are living under false names and have criminal records like Bonnie and Clyde. Their real names are Betty and Maurice Mills. They have been conning elderly and middle-aged women out of their money for more than 25 years. Jasmine then proves to the court that Grace is innocent as Betty and Maurice were convicted criminals and that Shannon was not dead and that they have warrants out for them in multiple states. Grace is therefore declared as innocent, and the movie ends with them celebrating. But Betty aka Sarah is still on the run and has been hired to take care of elderly women in a nursing home therefore starting the cycle up again. “A Fall from Grace” addresses the concept of proving your clients as innocent and going as deep and as strong as you have to do to prove to the jury and judge that they did not commit the crime. Jasmine felt like the case was missing some pieces and that grace was innocent, so grace did research and pieced together that Shannon was not dead and that him and his mother was regular con artist living under different identities but still robbing elderly women out of their social security check and keeping them locked up in the basement. Jasmine was really only known as the plea deal lawyer because most cases she did always ended in plea deals, so she really didn’t assume anything different with grace case and her boss also wanted to keep it as Grace was guilty because the company didn’t have much money and didn’t want to deal with media as that ruins the firm’s reputation. I feel that the firm just showed how corrupted the government can be due to money issues or feeling lazy when it comes down to pursuing a case that is injustice although it is literally in their oath. I really liked “A fall from Grace” even from the name cause you will think of it the word Grace and that it’s something like biblical in away because something probably happened that made The grace essentially change but what the movie is about is literally in the title with the main character name is grace and her husband supposedly got pushed that the stairs leading her to jail for murder so there’s her fall but as we all know later on that Shannon was not dead and did indeed con her out of money and made her seem crazy and conspired along with his mom which acted like she was Grace friend but the whole time she was an enemy. And it did portray the legal field because it showed that innocent people can go to jail and that due to budget or the attorneys thinking that the case is an easy case and just needs a plea deal because everything points to that person being guilty but that’s not true. People sometimes just say they are guilty because they are covering for someone, or they just think that might as well be guilty cause that’s what everyone thinks already. I’m so Happy that Jasmine trusted her gut and didn’t follow her boss’ advice because an innocent woman who had already lost everything was going to lose her freedom as well. I learned to follow my instinct if something doesn’t feel right, keep on researching and putting the pieces together because it might not be right.
