Compulsion

The story

After two privileged friends kidnap and kill a young boy, one dropped pair of glasses shatters their plan for a flawless crime. Dean Stockwell and Bradford Dillman are the arrogant young men at the center of a story loosely drawn from the Leopold and Loeb case, with Orson Welles as Jonathan Wilk, the defense attorney who takes on their trial. As the case moves from sensational headlines into the courtroom, the film shifts its focus to arguments over guilt, class, responsibility, and whether the state should answer murder with execution.