10 Movies Which Go From 0-100 Right At The End

In Primal Fear, defence attorney Martin Vail (Richard Gere) is making bank working for people he knows he shouldn’t really be representing – but somebody has to, and so long as his clients pay, well, he’s happy to be their man. Ahh, justice.

But, when a new case finds its way onto his desk, in which amnesiac altar boy Aaron Stampler (Edward Norton) is accused of brutally murdering the Archbishop of Chicago, Martin has to put his selfish interests aside and work to prevent the boy from receiving the death penalty. Somewhere in-between courtroom drama and police procedural, light on action and heavy on scuttlebutt, a lot of Primal Fear is spent on after-the-fact investigations and evidence retrieval, as it comes to light that Aaron’s dissociative personality Roy might be responsible.

However, the film abandons pretence in the 11th hour, after Martin has effectively helped Aaron dodge not only the death penalty but any kind of meaningful sentence. In the final scene, Aaron reveals that he has been faking all along - his true personality is that of the aggressive, destructive, and sinister Roy, and, in a manic, scenery-chewing confession, he reveals he's been using Martin all along to get away with murder.