Directed by: Gary Fleder
Starring: John Cusack, Rachel Weisz, Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, Jeremy Piven, Cliff Curtis, Nora Dunn, Bruce McGill, Bruce Davison
With a trial at its core which still feels timely because, even fifteen years after Runaway Jury was made, we as a nation are still at a loss to deal with gun violence. While Runaway Jury has something to say about gun violence liability, it has even more to say about jury tampering. The villainous, slimy Rankin Fitch (Hackman) is hired by the defendant gun manufacturer to ensure a sympathetic jury which will find for the defense in an explosive civil trial. He hires goons to intimidate jurors, blackmails, extorts, performs illegal surveillance, and charges $20 million for the expense of setting up his team in an abandoned clothing store with the latest computer and surveillance gadgets. When told his $20 million price tag seems excessive, Fitch rationalizes his price tag in dollars and cents. One verdict in favor of the plaintiff in such a trial will open the floodgates and cost billions in damages in future trials. Fitch is very good at his job, which means those opposing him have to somehow be better.
His opposition is Wendell Rohr (Hoffman), the by-the-book defense attorney for a widow whose husband was killed in a mass shooting. She is suing the gun manufacturer for negligence because the gun was bought illegally and without any safeguards preventing the product from falling into the wrong hands. Rohr has no idea what he is up against. His opponent, defense attorney Durwood Cable (Davison), has a camera installed on his briefcase so Fitch can keep tabs on the trial proceedings and, most importantly, jury selection. You have to love the names like Rankin Fitch and Durwood Cable, which sound like they were lifted from an episode of Dynasty or Days of Our Lives.
The wild card in the trial is seemingly harmless juror Nicholas Easter (Cusack), who attempts to beg off the jury because he is involved in a Madden video game tournament and doesn't want to lose out on the grand prize. This assures him a spot as Juror #9, and he is not the type of juror Fitch wants on his ideal jury. Easter has a hidden agenda also, as does his girlfriend Marlee (Weisz), which is made known in short order. Marlee and Easter offer both sides the opportunity to buy a favorable verdict for the bargain price of $10 million. Easter will manipulate the jurors into siding with him and his side will be directly affected by whomever pays him. What would they do if both sides agreed to the price? This is not the type of movie where you ask that.
What are Nicholas and Marlee up to? Are they simply opportunists or do they have a deeper agenda? The movie wisely doesn't reveal the motives too quickly, so the events play out more or less logically. I must grant you that their plot leaves an awful lot to chance, including ensuring that Nicholas finds his way onto the jury and whether he can seriously sway the jury with his charm and charisma. These are things to think about before authorizing a wire transfer to the Cayman Islands. For long stretches, we aren't sure we even have a rooting interest, but that only keeps us guessing and involved.
I won't reveal much more, but Hoffman and Hackman have a fun scene which marks the first time this acting giants have ever been in a movie scene together, despite their decades-long friendship and being former roommates to boot. Cusack relies on his everyman charm to conceal his hand, while Marlee also has to walk an emotional tightrope. Runaway Jury is another of many film adaptations of a John Grisham novel. Grisham, an attorney himself, takes his cynicism about the legal profession and extends it to absurd, but nevertheless entertaining lengths. The Firm, A Time to Kill, and The Rainmaker are successful adaptations with perhaps happier endings than Grisham wrote in his novels, or at least endings which don't completely crap on the possibility of some humanity peeking through in the legal system. I would put Runaway Jury in the middle of the better Grisham films, mostly because what happens isn't based on the law as much as personalities and the human element which makes up juries. Is it any wonder that Fitch would declare, "Trials are too important to be left up to juries,"? If verdicts in the O.J. Simpson trial and the police officers charged in the Rodney King beating are any indication, is he all that wrong?
No comments:
Post a Comment