This movie had the potential to tell a compelling story, but they did it all wrong.

The movie had good believable acting from Hanks and Denzel Washington, but they completely failed in the way they chose to tell the story. There's just too many courtroom scenes and not enough character development, and that gets very boring and repetitive, very fast. You can't give the movie credit for the story it's TRYING to tell, because as far as I'm concerned, the story it DID tell was not told in an entertaining way, this should've been more character driven.

The two main characters weren't developed enough. For one, the transformation of Denzel's feelings about gay people was not believable, there just wasn't enough shown on screen to make the viewer believe that he would have any reason to change his feelings. The way it was directed, it looked as if that opera scene is what changed Denzel's feelings about Hanks, and that's ridiculous to have someone's lifelong feelings that has been etched into their persona be changed almost because of a single incident (like I said, the way it was directed implied this). They should've shown a gradual change and made it interesting, maybe throw in a scene where Denzel protects Hanks from ridicule or something, I don't know, just show some sort of growing relationship to make the viewer care.