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MINI MOVIE REVIEW:
"Runaway Jury" is the entertaining though highly improbable John Grisham courtroom thriller about jury tampering
on a massive scale brought to the silver screen. This story succeeds only because its lead characters are all perfectly cast
and wonderful to watch. The New Orleans locales also help in adding flavor to this movie.
On the other hand, this movie falls down because Grisham has failed to give any of the lead characters a spark of a personality
one inch beyond their mostly hidden agendas and we are left with having to extrapolate who they might be from their long time
cinema personalities exhibited in other movies.
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MOVIE CRITIQUE:
"Runaway Jury" is an entertaining movie through and through in its depiction of courtroom corruption and jury
tampering on a scale so massive as to invite the judge to declare a mistrial were he to be made aware of it. In addition,
the story itself is filled with holes in its logic so broad as to be on the whole rather unbelievable. You will have to suspend
your judgment, sit back in your theater seat, and just go with the flow of this movie.
The primary actors, Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, John Cusack, and Rachel Weisz, are all a delight as they each go through
their paces in bringing to the screen this John Grisham novel.
What this movies lacks in its by the numbers story is any element of a personality on the part of the characters that
is outside anything having to do with their generally hidden legal objectives. Because of this, the story lacks the humanity
necessary for us to empathize with any of the characters involved. They all are flat, two dimensional entities and the story
is written in such a way as we hardly know who to root for, who to empathize with.
Sure, Gene Hackman is an easy villain as he chews the rug along with most of the scenery in his over the top and highly
emotive performance as a hired gun. His job is to select those jurors who will be sympathetic to the premise that handgun
manufacturers are innocent of being accessories to a mass murder because they have flooded the streets with assault weapons
that have been far too easy to obtain. We've seen Hackman do this before, and he, of course, is always a delight in his role
as a cinema heavy. However, since the agenda of his opponents is mostly unknown, the possibility of a switcheroo in his villainy
cannot be entirely discounted.
John Cusack, another fine actor in his own right, carries into this movie a screen personality that is eminently likable.
He is young and he is also charismatic but his romantic relationship with equally likable costar Rachel Weisz also involves
a business angle with a legal agenda that is not disclosed until near the end of the film. They also are attempting to tamper
with the jury and, thus, the outcome of this trial, but why? Are we to assume that their motives are any the less suspect
because they just happen to be the more likable of the two parties involved in this jury tampering?
In short, the mystery in this movie should not have been who these two are and why they are doing what they are doing
but how the courtroom theatrics and manipulations are going to turn out. We are stuck with having two mysteries to guess at
and this severely detracts from the enjoyment of this film.
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MOVIE SYNOPSIS:
It is midmorning in a stock brokerage house and everyone is going about their daily business when the staccato sounds
of a pop-pop-pop echo throughout the offices. Glass walls start crashing to the floor and everyone realizes to their horror
that this popping is the sound of gunfire.
Not believing that this is for real, a large number of the members of the firm have been murdered in cold blood by a young
man who had been, it later turns out, a day trader at the firm who had gone sour and lost all his money.
Several years later the case of a wife left without her husband who had been murdered by this crazed ex-customer is finally
coming to trial in a New Orleans courtroom. She has filed a lawsuit against the gun manufacturer for flooding the market with
assault weapons, one of which was used in his killing spree. Her case is being handled by the prosecuting attorney, Wendel
Rohr (Dustin Hoffman).
Hotshot jury consultant Rankin Fitch (Gene Hackman) has just been hired by a Vicksburg gun manufacturer to help select
jury members who will be more open minded to the "Guns don't kill, people kill" mentality of gun manufacturers.
Their defense lawyer, Durwood Cabel (Bruce Davison), has reached out to Fitch for help because of the critical nature of this
trial.
Fitch steps from his airport limousine into his headquarters hidden in a nondescript and rather seedy downtown office
building. Once inside and past security, however, everything is high tech as computers run in depth searches on every single
member in the large jury pool. Large moveable poster boards line the walls with pictures of all these potential jurors with
photos and notes filling the boards with critical information on each. Fitch wants to know everything about all of these potential
jurors: who they are, where they came from, what their weaknesses and prejudices are, and, especially, if there might be something
in their background that can be used as blackmail against them.
In another part of town, Nicholas Easter comes home to his small apartment building and gets his mail out of the lock
box on the first floor. Inside is a summons for jury duty and he smiles. Later he meets with his girlfriend, Marly (Rachel
Weisz), and he shows her his summons. To our surprise, she is ecstatic and she hugs Nick with joy. We soon find out why as
Nick visits her apartment and again we are surprised to see her small apartment filled with the same giant poster boards that
graced the offices of Rankin Fitch. And, also like Fitch's boards, pictures of all of the potential jurors are laid out across
each. Unfortunately, an explanation for this display is not provided and we have to guess at her motives for doing this.
The courtroom of Judge Harkin (Bruce McGill, promoted from policeman in "My Cousin Vinny" and collegiate drunk
in "Animal House") stands at attention as he enters. Soon seated, the jury selection process begins as the jurors
are sequentially called to the stands and placed under review. One of attorney Cable's assistants is in constant telephone
contact with Fitch at his headquarters as each juror is called to the stands.
Attorney Wendell Rohr is, obviously, at a disadvantage as he has only his finely honed instincts as a long time lawyer
to guide him in his selection or rejection of each person for jury duty. Nevertheless, the jury pool fills out near to completion
when Nicholas Easter is finally called to the stand. One of Fitch's assistants remarks to Fitch that this guy is an enigma
as computer searches on him only go back a few years and nothing else can be found out about him.
Fitch yells at his personnel to look further and dig deeper. Yet, he has to make a decision now, and something that Easter
does pleases him and helps allay his fears.
He tells Cable's assistant to accept Easter as a juror and the game is now on.
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