Somehow I missed this movie when it was released, and I rented it recently from an online DVD store without knowing how old it was. I quickly surmised that it was mid 90's, but what I was startled at right from the outset was how incredibly DATED it seemed: the attitudes portrayed, the liberal guilt, and its attempted resolution through the courtroom heroics of the protagonist. This might have been a groundbreaking film a couple of decades earlier, but I guess the producers didn't notice we already have 'To Kill a Mockingbird', 'Twelve Angry Men' and umpteen other such things. Then it hit me, why all this incredibly old-fashioned moralising... but I'll get to that in a minute.
This alone may not have sunk the film, but lo, the movie suffers from the attack of every screen writing cliché in Hollywood. I mean, it's so predictable that I was actually able to hold my left hand in the air and let it fall at the exact moment that Matthew McConaughey's supposedly dead dog runs out of the bushes. Add to that the utter over-the-topness of it. We've got the Klux Klux Klan marching down the road outside the court in broad daylight for Heaven's sake, and the National Guard running about going 'Hut! Hut! Hut!', and armoured vehicles - in one scene the army has machine guns trained on the (completely inert) crowd outside the court. Heaven forbid they should just cordon off the area if they were expecting trouble. I'm sorry, but I actually laughed at a couple of these moments.
We've got a bunch of fine actors, almost none of whom are given anything to act with. Good evidence of this is that Kiefer Sutherland was in a movie with both his father and Kevin Spacey, and managed not to look conspicuously inferior. I don't think this was due to any great effort on KS's part. More that his character was about as one-dimensional as theirs.
I could have fun just listing the absurdities in this movie. Oh, and the plot-holes. Part of the reason we're supposed to accept that the revenge killing was justifiable in this case, is that one of the perps had signed a confession. If this was so, why was everybody expecting him to walk free the day he went into court? And did Morgan Freeman's character _know_ about this confession (this is the defense of the revenge killing; that the killer absolutely _knows_ the accused to be guilty.) And oh, yes, it just slipped the defense team's attention that their star psychiatrist was a convicted statutory rapist? Good God.
Now, if all of that isn't bad enough, we have the fact that the film is actually pretty offensive. We're supposed to come away from this feeling that this vigilante revenge killing was justified; either that or presumably get in our pickup with the Union flag on it and drive off swigging a bottle of Jack Daniels. Well, pardon me: I'm opposed to the death penalty, AND I would probably have done the same thing Freeman's characer did, like most guys would in that situation when they're half out of their minds, but this film did not convince me that I would have been right in so doing, and I don't like having my intelligence insulted by the supposition that I can't work it out for myself.
McConaughey tells the jury to imagine that the rape victim was white. The prosecuting attorney might have been given the opportunity to ask them to imagine if the two men Freeman shot had turned out to be innocent. Because ultimately that's what's on trial here: not this specific case, but the whole notion of the death penalty, whether dispensed by the courts or by a vigilante.
Oh yeah. The Magistrate is Judge Noose. That has to be either one of the worst attempts at humour in history, or the worst attempt at symbolism in history. I forgot about that.
Anyway, earlier I said I was baffled by why the film seemed so dated, so concerned with the race issue. Why Freeman's character could say something as dumb to his lawyer on the last day of the trial as "America is a war. You're on the other side." Then I remembered, this was only a few years after the Rodney King bashing and the LA riots. A film very much of its time, but that doesn't excuse how terribly ham-fisted and clichéd it is.
I'm giving it 5 simply because the production values were decent, the actors did what they could with a bad script, and there were actually two or three decent scenes (Bullock and McConaughey in the café arguing over the death penalty was one of the film's few good moments). But 5 is my bare minimum for a big budget modern movie simply going through the motions. This has nothing to lift it any higher, and I'm probably being a bit kind to it.
I suppose I should add that I live on an island halfway to Antarctica, so don't really have any overwhelming racial or political investment in the subject matter. It was just a stupid film. It would have been stupid if it had presented the opposite point of view as ineptly.
I find this movie guilty of being ridiculous, obnoxious, predictable, and occasionally funny.
This alone may not have sunk the film, but lo, the movie suffers from the attack of every screen writing cliché in Hollywood. I mean, it's so predictable that I was actually able to hold my left hand in the air and let it fall at the exact moment that Matthew McConaughey's supposedly dead dog runs out of the bushes. Add to that the utter over-the-topness of it. We've got the Klux Klux Klan marching down the road outside the court in broad daylight for Heaven's sake, and the National Guard running about going 'Hut! Hut! Hut!', and armoured vehicles - in one scene the army has machine guns trained on the (completely inert) crowd outside the court. Heaven forbid they should just cordon off the area if they were expecting trouble. I'm sorry, but I actually laughed at a couple of these moments.
We've got a bunch of fine actors, almost none of whom are given anything to act with. Good evidence of this is that Kiefer Sutherland was in a movie with both his father and Kevin Spacey, and managed not to look conspicuously inferior. I don't think this was due to any great effort on KS's part. More that his character was about as one-dimensional as theirs.
I could have fun just listing the absurdities in this movie. Oh, and the plot-holes. Part of the reason we're supposed to accept that the revenge killing was justifiable in this case, is that one of the perps had signed a confession. If this was so, why was everybody expecting him to walk free the day he went into court? And did Morgan Freeman's character _know_ about this confession (this is the defense of the revenge killing; that the killer absolutely _knows_ the accused to be guilty.) And oh, yes, it just slipped the defense team's attention that their star psychiatrist was a convicted statutory rapist? Good God.
Now, if all of that isn't bad enough, we have the fact that the film is actually pretty offensive. We're supposed to come away from this feeling that this vigilante revenge killing was justified; either that or presumably get in our pickup with the Union flag on it and drive off swigging a bottle of Jack Daniels. Well, pardon me: I'm opposed to the death penalty, AND I would probably have done the same thing Freeman's characer did, like most guys would in that situation when they're half out of their minds, but this film did not convince me that I would have been right in so doing, and I don't like having my intelligence insulted by the supposition that I can't work it out for myself.
McConaughey tells the jury to imagine that the rape victim was white. The prosecuting attorney might have been given the opportunity to ask them to imagine if the two men Freeman shot had turned out to be innocent. Because ultimately that's what's on trial here: not this specific case, but the whole notion of the death penalty, whether dispensed by the courts or by a vigilante.
Oh yeah. The Magistrate is Judge Noose. That has to be either one of the worst attempts at humour in history, or the worst attempt at symbolism in history. I forgot about that.
Anyway, earlier I said I was baffled by why the film seemed so dated, so concerned with the race issue. Why Freeman's character could say something as dumb to his lawyer on the last day of the trial as "America is a war. You're on the other side." Then I remembered, this was only a few years after the Rodney King bashing and the LA riots. A film very much of its time, but that doesn't excuse how terribly ham-fisted and clichéd it is.
I'm giving it 5 simply because the production values were decent, the actors did what they could with a bad script, and there were actually two or three decent scenes (Bullock and McConaughey in the café arguing over the death penalty was one of the film's few good moments). But 5 is my bare minimum for a big budget modern movie simply going through the motions. This has nothing to lift it any higher, and I'm probably being a bit kind to it.
I suppose I should add that I live on an island halfway to Antarctica, so don't really have any overwhelming racial or political investment in the subject matter. It was just a stupid film. It would have been stupid if it had presented the opposite point of view as ineptly.
I find this movie guilty of being ridiculous, obnoxious, predictable, and occasionally funny.