'GUILTY' AS CHARGED VIN DIESEL TAKES A DRAMATIC TURN IN COURTROOM DRAMA.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

Just when we thought the Vin Diesel action machine had run out of fuel, the clean-headed actor made the unexpected family comedy blockbuster "The Pacifier."

Now, almost exactly a year after that hit, the man with the Kryptonic arm muscles is back with an even bigger surprise: a critically acclaimed, primarily verbal performance in "Find Me Guilty." It's a courtroom drama directed by the past master of such things, Sidney Lumet ("12 Angry Men," "The Verdict"), based on the true story of the longest criminal trial in American history.

Diesel plays Jackie DiNorscio, who acted as his own lawyer when he and 19 other members of New Jersey's Lucchese Mafia organization were brought up on 76 counts. The court proceedings took 21 months in 1987 and '88.

For New York native Diesel - a former nightclub bouncer and short-film maker, whose movie stardom was built on such headbanging action fare as "Pitch Black," "The Fast and the Furious" and "XXX" - playing his first real-life character for the director of such performance-centered classics as "Serpico," "Network" and "Dog Day Afternoon" was a rare and satisfying thrill.

"That was a dream," Diesel, 38, says in his familiar, smoky purr of a voice. "As an actor, you find yourself studying the performances of actors you've admired in the past, and so often those performances were in Sidney Lumet movies. When I directed my first short film, 'Multi-Facial,' I bought a book by Sidney Lumet called 'Making Movies,' and that book actually gave me the confidence to direct. So this was coming full circle, 10 years later, into the master's program, with the master."

Lumet says that "Multi-Facial," in which Diesel plays five different characters in 20 minutes, convinced him that the actor could handle anything thrown his way.

"When I saw that movie, I saw a major talent," the director says. "(Diesel) is a superb actor. Very few people know it, but they will after seeing this movie. Because the normal association is, 'Oh, well, he's a race-car action hero.'"

Diesel returns the compliment. "For an actor in Hollywood nowadays, it's a treat to work with an actors' director," he says. "It's not the norm."

Nor is Diesel your normal actor. He likes to keep his real name (which we think is Mark Vincent), his ethnic makeup (African-American and Caucasian, as best we can tell) and love life (we're not even gonna speculate) a mystery.

And although his biggest hits have been souped-up speed rides and a kiddie comedy, Diesel has sometimes acted like a lofty thespian. He (in)famously declined to make sequels to "Furious" and "XXX," his two biggest hits. His films that came out in their place, "A Man Apart" and the "Pitch Black" sequel "The Chronicles of Riddick," were costly failures.

"As we've seen, if the script's not right, regardless of the money, I won't do it," Diesel says without apology.

"If I don't feel like I can bring something special to the picture via performance, I will pass on it. So I have been labeled as being somewhat precious. But that's OK because I want the movies that I make to allow you to feel like you've escaped for a couple of hours."

There was no escaping from Jackie DiNorscio. Not for him; the mobster was already serving a 30-year sentence when the Lucchese trial came about, and therefore felt he had nothing to lose by quirkily pleading his own defense. Not for the actor, either; Diesel had hours of courtroom footage and taped prison interviews of his subject to draw upon, and admits that he had trouble getting the oddly endearing character out of his system at the end of shooting days - and for weeks after the film wrapped.

Then there was meeting the paroled DiNorscio, who was sick and elderly when he paid a set visit.

"I had never played a real-life character," Diesel explains. "All the characters that I'd played before were fictitious. So I'd spent all this time creating the affectations and amassing all of the attributes and characteristics and mannerisms, and then Jackie came to the set the first day of filming. I kicked everyone else out of my trailer, and we started to talk. He told me, in his own words, just for him and I, what the whole story was about for him and what that trial meant to him. After that meeting, all of the work that had gone into building the mannerisms and attributes seemed secondary. The most important element was to understand and believe in his cause."

Another new challenge for Diesel: hair! Jackie had a healthy, graying mass of it.

"All movie magic!" Diesel, now chrome-domed again, says. "Two hours of makeup every morning."

When it came to approximating the middle-age gangster's noticeable gut, the actor did all the work by himself.

"Loved it. Loved it! I ate a quart of ice cream a day. I just needed to stay still. Any time I had the urge to get up, I'd just wait a minute and sit back down.

"Then I went to Europe and returned to the preparation of the Hannibal character," says Diesel, now back at muscular fighting weight. He's long dreamed of directing and starring in an epic about the Carthaginian general who took the long way around from his African homeland to attack ancient Rome from the north. "So I went hiking up into the Alps. I was deeply engaged in weapons training, riding elephants."

Good exercise. Plus, it was a good place to hide from any surviving members of the Lucchese family who may have had issues with "Find Me Guilty."

"No, I haven't heard from them," Diesel says with a laugh. "And I don't want to. I just went in, did the film and moved to the Alps."

Funny, but it raises the question of "Find Me Guilty's" reverse-polar morality. While Jackie and his pals are clearly guilty of all kinds of crimes, up to and including murder, Jackie's charming, every-mook courtroom antics, and the film's point of view, shift sympathy to the hoods. Diesel sees nothing wrong with that.

"I think, when we go to the movies and we are forced to follow a whitewashed protagonist, there's a part of us that divorces ourselves from that character," the actor reckons. "We say, 'I'm not perfect.'

"There's no way I can relate to that person that's perfect. I can more easily relate to a character that has imperfections like we all recognize in ourselves.

"Jackie's a good guy in my mind, because he had this ability to love more than we've seen in a lot of films," he adds. "I mean, when was the last time we saw a character in a movie who can still love somebody that shot him?"

Yeah, but what about the distinct possibility that Jackie, who died while the film was in production, might have shot some people during his dubious career, or otherwise caused grievous harm?

"Oh, I have no idea," Diesel says, shrugging. "I doubt it. What was your name and where do you live? I just want them to know that you asked about that. I didn't bring it up."

Obviously, Diesel has no problem reconciling his likable portrayal of a mobster with his new status as a children's film idol.

"Now I have little kid fans, which I didn't have before because kids weren't able to see the movies," he acknowledges. "I made 'The Pacifier' because my niece and nephew, who were my biggest fans, were too young to watch Uncle Vin movies.

So I made 'Pacifier' and took them to the premiere."

And although "The Pacifier's" commercial success hasn't brought Diesel much closer to realizing his Hannibal movie dream - "Four years of soft preproduction and I initially got a budget back of $237 million," he says, "and we all know that means you ain't makin' your movie" - he acknowledges that it's expanded his career possibilities right when he needed it most.

"Well, it gave me the ability to make a Disney film at any time, and that ain't bad," Diesel notes. "Ron Bass ("Rain Man," "My Best Friend's Wedding") is now writing a romantic comedy for me at Disney, which is super-cool. That comes out of the ability to do a straight family picture, which I hadn't done before. Career diversification is always good. Especially if you need to be inspired by the role."

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

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5 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) DIESEL POWER

Action hero Vin Diesel flexes dramatic muscle in `Find Me Guilty'

(2) Vin Diesel plays Jackie DiNorscio, a member of New Jersey's Lucchese Mafia, who acted as his own lawyer, in ``Find Me Guilty.''

(3) Diesel as Navy SEAL-turned-nanny in ``The Pacifier.''

(4 -- 5) Diesel in earlier action roles: above, in ``The Chronicles of Riddick'' and near right, in ``The Fast and the Furious.''