The International Writers Magazine -RUNAWAY JURY

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Directed by Gary Fleder Writing credits John Grisham (novel) Brian Koppelman (screenplay) The Cast: John Cusack .... Nicholas Easter Gene Hackman .... Rankin Fitch Dustin Hoffman .... Wendell Rohr Rachel Weisz .... Marlee Bruce Davison .... Durwood Cable Bruce McGill .... Judge Harkin Jeremy Piven .... Lawrence Green Nick Searcy .... Doyle Stanley Anderson ...Henry Jankle Cliff Curtis .... Frank Herrera Nestor Serrano .... Janovich Leland Jennifer Beals .... Vanessa Lembeck Gerry Bamman .... Herman Grimes Joanna Going .... Celeste Wood

Trials Are Too Important To Be Decided by Juries

It just goes to show, you can finally get Dustin Hoffman together with Gene Hackman, add John Cusak and the exciting Miss Rachael Weisz and quite forget that you also need to make the movie interesting.
Sure Dustin and Gene act their socks off but this film seems to be a waste of John Cusak’s talent and Rachael Weisz’s time. A thriller it is not and the John Grisham franchise seems to have well and truly run its course. Sure there will be a twist, but first you have to make us care about the characters and very little time is devoted to this.

There is an interesting film to make about juries 12 Angry Men starring Henry Fonda comes to mind. It was passionate, sweaty and tense as one juror attempts to persuade the others a man isn’t guilty.
Runaway Jury looks like 12 people in a bus station waiting room with nothing to say to each other. Talents are wasted here. What is Jennifer Beals doing there? Why does she virtually have no lines? Sure everyone hates jury duty, but since they go to the trouble to intensely profile each juror, why not let them also become real people. The fault lies in the book and Koppleman's script I feel. You never even believe that Cusak’s character can sway the jury to his will when the time comes. Apartments get burned to the ground, people get hurt, but everyone keeps saying 'Oh but we won't call the cops because...' because they know this is a movie and logic is totally suspended, that's why. No other reason. An investigating cop would have helped this movie immensely.

The theme is that juries can be manipulated, bought and sold for millions of dollars in show trials. This trial, against the firearms industry, is big, but since we know that the arms industry is never going to lose until it is ripped away from their ‘cold dead hands’ we also know that this is fantasy.

The tension just isn’t there. Cusak never gets to be particularly clever and is merely reacting to events or passive throughout the movie. Rachael Weisz does get to kick some ass and we do get a sense of the high stakes she is playing with, but the villains are assine. Gene Hackman is over the top and his best line 'Trials are too important to be decided by juries' is the tag line for the movie anyway. Hoffman is just reminding us that he is a class actor in search of a better role (and a good suit).

I should have known when in its first week out in the UK muliplex’s it was quietly hidden in the smallest screens. They just weren’t expecting any of us to turn up.
A waste of time

© Sam North Jan 26th 2004
editor@hackwriters.com

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