The critic Mark Cousins interviewed Jonathan Demme in 1999 for a BBC television series where they went through the directors work. Cousins had the gall to tell Demme to his face that he was going to skip discussing Philadelphia because he disliked it so much.

Demme later admitted that he was trying to reach out to people who couldn't care less about people with Aids. In the early 1990s homophobia was more overt in the USA and western Europe than it is a quarter of a century later. There was certainly more antagonism and discrimination against people with Aids.

The film opens with a sublime song by Bruce Springsteen and ends with a haunting one from Neil Young. In the middle you get some awful long operatic scene which really does not work.

Andrew Beckett (Tom Hanks) is up and coming hot shot lawyer for a top law firm who has Aids. When one of the parter's in the firm discover a lesion on his face Andy gets fired. The partners tell him that his work was not up to scratch and he had an attitude problem.

Andy sees it as discrimination, he knows some of the partners are homophobic. The firm had earlier had given him an important case to litigate. Andy tries to hire ambulance chaser Joe Miller (Denzel Washington) to fight his wrongful termination claim after other lawyers had declined to take his case on. Miller also turns him down, he too is uncomfortable with Andy's sexuality and illness but later changes his mind.

The film can be applauded to bring the issue of Aids discrimination to the forefront. It also had several people in the movie who had Aids or HIV.

However the film suffers from clunkiness and mawkishness. Some of the courtroom scenes were jagged. Some of Andy's ex bosses came across as creepy old men in the witness box.

It is still an important film in gay cinema despite actually being timid in showing Andy's relationship with his lover as well as having straight actors in the main roles.