Jagged Edge is a 1985 American courtroom drama thriller movie set in San Francisco, California. Richard Marquand directed the film, and Joe Esterhaus wrote the screenplay. Jeff Bridges stars as Jack Forrester; Glenn Close plays Teddy Barnes, his defense attorney; Peter Coyote plays the District Attorney; Robert Loggia received an Academy Award nomination for his role as a private investigator.
In Jagged Edge, wealthy San Francisco newspaper heiress Page Forrester, along with the heiress' maid, are brutally murdered by an intruder with a hunting knife while at the heiress' beach house. The heiress' husband Jack Forrester, a wealthy and influential San Francisco publisher, was allegedly knocked out prior to the murders.
Set to inherit everything, Forrester is arrested under suspicion of murder. A female attorney, ex-criminal prosecutor Teddy Barnes (who had stepped away from the courtroom for years following traumatic events in her own life), reluctantly returns to the courtroom to represent Forrester in court after being persuaded by a private investigator. It becomes a very high-profile trial. Moral and ethical quandaries present themselves in the legal case and in the personal relationship between Forrester and Barnes.
The movie explores themes such as guilt, doubt, manipulation and lies in the context of a courtroom drama.
Jagged Edge was released on October 4, 1985. It received an MPAA rating of "R", and has a runtime of 110 minutes (though some websites list the runtime as 108 minutes). Roger Ebert gave the film 4.5 stars.
Jagged Edge did quite well at the box office, at a time when legal thrillers were just starting to come into theatrical vogue, ushering in years of similar nailbiters.
As of July, 2026, Jagged Edge has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 79%.