Dir: Gary Fleder. Starring: John Cusack, Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, Rachel Weisz, Jennifer Beals.
Ah, John Grisham. In terms of adaptation he’s really the only guy who can give Stephen King a run for his money. Now, I personally prefer Grisham – I’ve long been a sucker for legal dramas – but this is not to say every Grisham film makes me wet my pants. Runaway Jury, unfortunately, can be filed next to The Gingerbread Man under “Lacklustre Directing That Squanders Decent Talent.” It’s a big name, but it’s an awfully big file.
Nicholas Easter is ecstatic at being picked as a jury member for a high profile case. A bereaved wife is suing the manufacturer of the gun that killed her husband, and the defence team has hired Rankin Fitch, a so called “Jury Consultant”. With Fitch desperately trying to blackmail, outmanoeuvre and analyse the jury, Easter and his girlfriend Marlee gain control of the volatile opinions. Ransoming the verdict of the trial for ten million dollars, Nicholas and Marlee have to control the jury, and avoid Fitch’s henchman at the same time. What follows is an unfortunate parroting of every legal drama since the fifties.
Director Gary Fleder has a television background and it dogs every frame of this film. Used to working in half hour chunks, Fleder doesn’t realise a film can’t coast on story like tv can. The characters in Runaway Jury are so banal and half-dressed, it’s hard to feel anything but the most obligatory interest in them. Stylistically, he’s done nothing with the widescreen he chose to film in.
This pedestrian approach doesn’t just waste Grisham’s fabulous antebellum setting, it squanders an almost uniformly talented cast. As Nicholas, John Cusack is as engaging – and slightly mysterious – as ever, but he has little to do except raise his eyebrows. The rest of the jury, and Rachel Weisz as Marlee don’t do much more, either. Mercifully Dustin Hoffman manages to wring some real pathos out of prosecuting counsel Wendell Rohr, but the same can’t be said for Gene Hackman, who’s really living up to his surname these days. The choice of Hackman is an obvious an insipid one. Watching him tread the familiar path from arrogance to outrage is about as exciting as watching treacle thicken.
There’s the usual legal drama dramas; apartments trashed, deadlines to meet, girlfriends imperilled and outraged lawyers putting justice on trial, but it all rings a little old. Grisham adaptations at their best really capture the sea of ethics that law floats upon. The only thing this film floats on is the same sea of suckers that the fifty-seventh franchise of Law and Order does. We can all do better than this.
C
Patrick Garson.
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