15 Totally Flawless Movie Monologues

In movies, there's really no better place for a crowd-pleasing monologue than the courtroom. Think Al Pacino's over-the-top tirade in Scent of a Woman, Gregory Peck's final plea in To Kill a Mockingbird, or a certain Aaron Sorkin-penned classic we'll get to later in this article - the courtroom is the best place for one last triumphant hoorah.

In A Time to Kill, Matthew McConaughey stars as struggling lawyer Jake Brigance, who decides to defend an African-American man, Carl Lee Hailey (Sam Jackson), who killed the two men who assaulted his daughter earlier in the film.

Despite the racial intolerance of the locals involved in the case, Jake decides to use the jury's prejudice against them. Getting them to close their eyes as he tells them - in very graphic detail - what happened to Carl's daughter, he then turns the whole thing on its head with the line: "Now imagine she's white."

It's a brutal, heart-wrenching statement that causes the jury to re-evaluate Carl's actions, acted without fault by McConaughey and leading to a great moral victory for the defence.

Careful watching this one, though - it's heavy going.