True Believer

Eddie Dodd once built a career defending civil rights causes, but he now spends his days getting drug dealers out of trouble, a line of work that pays far better. Into his office comes Roger Baron, a recent law school graduate who has followed Dodd's old cases for years and wants to learn from him. Roger pushes his reluctant boss to take up the case of Shu Kai Kim, a young Korean man serving time for a murder his mother insists he did not commit. The case pulls Dodd back toward the kind of law he abandoned, and the investigation, in which detective Kitty Greer assists, brings the two lawyers up against interests far more powerful than a single prisoner.

Joseph Ruben directed the film, which sits between The Stepfather and Sleeping with the Enemy in the run of features listed for him. Wesley Strick wrote the screenplay, and Walter F. Parkes and Lawrence Lasker produced it for Columbia Pictures. James Woods plays Dodd, Robert Downey Jr. plays Baron, and Margaret Colin, Yuji Okumoto, Kurtwood Smith and Tom Bower appear among the twenty-one credited cast members.

Released in February 1989, the film runs 105 minutes. On IMDb it holds a rating of 6.7 from around 6,000 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 6.2 from roughly 123 votes. A critics' rating of 7.1 from 23 reviews is somewhat higher than either audience figure, suggesting reviewers responded to it more warmly than general viewers did.