| The Runaway Jury | | Cast : | John Cusack, Gene Hackman, Rachel Weisz | | Director : | Gary Fleder | | Studio : | Fox Home Entertainme | | Format : | Color, Dolby, Full Screen | | Released Date : | October 17, 2003 | | DVD Released Date : | February 17, 2004 | | Language : | Spanish (Dubbed), English (Original Language), French (Original Language), Spanish (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled) | | Audience Rating : | PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | July 15, 2005 | | Summary | Hollywood wins; everybody else loses | Content
 | I'm no supporter of the rights of gun makers or owners, corporate welfare or the industrial revolution in litigation. That said, I felt like I needed a long shower after watching this flick - utterly redolent in almost toxic Hollywood-style self-righteousness in a slickly manipulative wrapper. Supposedly a legal confrontation between the gun industry and the victims of gun violence, it's really a showdown between an impassioned attorney for the victims played by Hoffman, and a skilled litigation consultant played by Hackman who picks juries from an ad-hoc control of the kind probably used in "Desert Storm". Between the two are John Cusak as one of the jurors, and Rachel Weisz as a mystery woman who claims she can deliver the jury to the side that pays the most.
This probably could have made either an effective legal thriller, or a great message movie - but not both. Unfortunately, Hollywood never avoids the cake-and-eat-it-to route, in which a message movie and a thriller are conflated into a single story that gives little room for either to effectively develop. A promising tale - one that would explore the sophisticated issue of corporate ethics and industrial liability versus our national obsession with suing everybody and responsibility avoidance - is edged out by a parallel story in which Rachel Weisz plays cat-and-mouse with Hackman's evil jury consultant. The less-promising tale - in which Weisz maneuvers between Hackman and Hoffman - would have provided some cool thrills, if not sandwiched between the preachy rhetoric of the trial. The stories detract rather than compliment each other. The thriller is never convincing because the idea of Weisz playing each side against the other never takes hold - the flick so openly wears its lawyer/gun-industry animus on its sleeve that we know from the first shot which side is really in her sights. I'm all for gun-control, whether the industry is manned by everyday people representing a social, economic or racial cross-section of America, or by a closed cabal of white, god-fearing patriarchal men with southern accents like those in this movie. The movie's message: we know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are, and if you just use your heart, you'll see things the way we do.
The story was originally aimed at the tobacco industry, supposedly to avoid confusion with the more effective "The Insider", and not because cigarettes are more popular on both sides of the screen than guns are. On second thought, I'm willing to accept that - the flick was reasonably aware of its weaknesses. Unfortunately, there's no effective lobby for bad-movie control. This isn't because Hollywood is nicer or otherwise better or than the gun industry, just comparatively harmless. Both are easily guilty for playing with the truth for a profit, but in the end one of them leaves us with an oft-painful reality that we then have to live with, while the other leaves us with fantasies no more costly than rising ticket prices and $5 buckets of popcorn. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 01, 2005 | | Summary | Changing the focus ruins the story | Content
| Once again, Hollywood has taken a great book and absolutely ruined it. The main problem of course is making the lawsuit about guns instead of tobacco. A large part of the drama in the book hinges on Grisham's excellent argument...cigarettes are addictive and are the only product that, when used exactly as directed, are extremely harmful or even fatal. No matter how you twist it, you can't say the same thing about guns and the trail in the movie loses its punch.
In the book, I read the lawyer's arguments about nicotine addiction and the industry's marketing strategies to hook the next generation and I started rooting for the plaintiff. There are some tricky issues regarding personal responsibility and the ridiculousness of rewarding someone for a bad choice, but on the whole, I did feel the tobacco companies needed to be prosecuted. I didn't feel the same way about the gun companies in the movie. Their products aren't addictive, a man made the free choice to use it to harm others. Why are they responsible for his actions? He could have killed his victims with a baseball bat, does that make Louisville responsible? The lawsuit was just another plaintiff seeking to capitalize on a tragedy and it disgusted me.
So why the change? Well obviously the filmmakers felt their personal gun-hating agenda was more important than sticking to the source material. (That and perhaps a few threats or bribes from the tobacco industry?) The liberal anti-gun drivel runneth over and they sacrificed a great story to make a political statement. I am not pro-gun, but I believe in personal choice and responsibility, something Hollywood quit caring about years ago.
If that isn't enough, it's a boring movie. The tiresome courtroom droning is broken up by a few token action scenes and it all runs waaay too long. They should have shaved off at least another 20 minutes. It doesn't help that everyone is completely miscast. Dustin Hoffman and Gene Hackman are fine actors, but Hoffman is too soft spoken for the flamboyant Rohr and Hackman isn't slimey and ruthless enough for Fitch. John Cusack is a waste all the way around and doesn't have the charisma to make me believe he could influence the other jurors the way he did.
The book is a hundred times more exciting than the movie. Skip this tired piece of Hollywood drivel and read it. |
| Rating | | | Date | June 14, 2005 | | Summary | Excellent Courtroom Thriller | Content
| In this movie, the gun industry is on trial. Should gun manufacturers be allowed to pedal their wares without any thought of responsibility? To tell the truth, this movie doesn't really focus on that. This movie focuses on the intrigues involved in jury trials. Is it possible to buy a jury? Can an inside man really influence the direction a jury will decide? These intriguing ideas are examined. As can be expected from this all star cast, the acting is very solid. Also, I'd like to say that the direction and story are very good as well. If you haven't read the book, you won't really know which side the case will fall to until the end of the movie. Overall, this is a great courtroom thriller. |
| Rating | | | Date | April 07, 2005 | | Summary | They almost had me fooled | Content
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***** WARNING: SPOILERS *****
The great performances in this film were marred only by the lack of an ethically consistent plot. The makers of this movie painted the characters in such a stereotypical fashion that it seemed certain they would turn the tables at the end--but they did not. This was its major failure.
The trial involves a case in which some miscreant kills several people with a handgun, which had been sold under dubious circumstances. Thus, said the plaintiff, the manufacturer, which did not care who bought its guns, should have been made responsible for what a killer did with one. Of course the legal representatives of the manufacturer (primarily a jury consultant played by Gene Hackman) were made evil and the lone attorney (played by Dustin Hoffman) for the plaintiff, a victim's widow, was made pious.
The pivotal characters (John Cusack and Rachel Weisz) were made, through most of the film, to appear as the criminals that they actually were; attempting to fix a trial, and sell the verdict to the highest bidder. They secretly never intended to sell the verdict, but only to commit the crimes of extortion and jury tampering to result in their favored verdict.
What SHOULD have happened in this movie is that both the plaintiff's attorney and the gun manufacturer's jury consultant should have exposed the crooks who were doing the jury tampering (which, naturally, the gun manufacturer's jury consultant was also doing.) Instead, the plaintiff's attorney exhibited profound hand-wringing, and the evil gun manufacturer's evil jury consultant took the bait, deciding to buy the verdict. He did this despite battling his pride, rather than any conflicting personal ethics.
What DID happen--and this is the big problem with the story, not its absurd stereotypes--is that the real crooks were converted to protagonists at the end, being allowed to walk off into the sunset as heros, having fixed a trial and extorted money from the antagonists. The viewer is expected to view this as justice, once learning that Cusack and Weisz had been victimized years ago, when the gun manufacturer's jury consultant had won a case that had been personal to the newly-canonized criminals. These same saints, moments before, had been jury tamperers and extortionists.
The morality of this story is clear--"the ends justify the means." "Jury tampering and exortion, if they favor the 'good guys,' are just." "Robin Hood is a saint because his victims are the 'bad guys.'"
The "craft" aspects of the film were fairly good, and probably covered for the poor script, so long as one's politics and morals easily conform to those of the writers, or do not exist at all (incidentally, the "bad guys" in the book were originally the tobacco lobby.) The acting and direction probably conveyed exactly the sentiment they were expected to. Hackman's performance, in particular, was brilliant. The ridiculously confused ethics of the movie, however, cause the objective viewer to be left confused, having been robbed of the correct ending of a courthouse drama, in which justice is served.
The reader of this review, if rationally objective, probably would not want to watch this film, because it preaches a damnable lie--that it is virtuous to commit extortion and subvert the justice system if done for the "right" reasons. |
| Rating | | | Date | February 28, 2005 | | Summary | A lot more could have been done. | Content
| I thought that this movie had an interesting story line and very good acting. I just thought that a lot more could have been done. It had more than its share of boring parts, and was ultimately easily forgetable. |
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