"Find Me Guilty," Mr. Lumet's first feature film in seven years, catches him near the top of his game. Now 81, this master surveyor of the urban jungle still has the machinery of police work and courtroom ritual down cold. His skill at conveying the feel of federal offices, jail cells and the eateries where cops and criminals gather to shoot the breeze is so precise you can almost smell the paint on the walls and the food in the kitchen. Where it can, the screenplay he wrote with T. J. Mancini and Robert J. McCrea uses dialogue taken from court transcripts.

Thanks to "The Godfather," "GoodFellas," "The Sopranos" and their countless imitations, the characters in contemporary mob dramas are now such beloved cliches that they are almost like family. Or rather, they are cherished fantasy projections of ourselves in a shadow version of a society obsessed with family values and corporate upward mobility.