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Court
of Appeal
By
Laura Leon
Runaway Jury
Directed
by Gary Felder
Fans of John Grisham books are up in arms about the fact that
the big meanie of the author’s 1996 best seller, Runaway
Jury, has been transformed from evil tobacco empire to
evil gun manufacturers. Even some conservative pundits are
getting in on the act, saying that the switch is due, no doubt,
to the liberal Hollywood establishment’s hatred of the NRA.
Memo to both parties: Get over yourselves. While it may be
set in a courtroom, Runaway Jury is not at all about
a legal fight, let alone an indictment of any particular corporation
or cause, as much as it is a highly entertaining power struggle
between jury specialist Rankin Fitch (Gene Hackman), idealistic
prosecutor Wendell Rohr (Dustin Hoffman), and insider-jury-swinger
Nick Easter (John Cusack).
The honey-tongued Rohr is representing the widow of a stock
trader who, along with several coworkers, was gunned down
by a disgruntled former daytrader. In seeking to get the powerful
Vicksburg Firearms to compensate for damages, he tells the
jury that he is only trying to make gun violence the problem
of the gun industry. Unfortunately for him, the industry has
hired Fitch, whose team of spooks clandestinely film, tape,
research and follow any potential juror. “Trials are too important
to be left to juries,” reasons Fitch, who knows which juror
has a drinking problem, which has money troubles, etc., all
for the purpose of tweaking their preferences, if need be.
The one wild card for Fitch in this particular jury is Easter,
an apparent aging slacker with no history. As the trial commences,
both Rohr and Fitch are contacted by the mysterious Marlee
(Rachel Weisz), who offers each his desired verdict for a
cool $10 million. Before long, both Rohr and Fitch realize
that Nick is the man on the inside working with Marlee, and
it’s a tense, if overlong, race to see who wins, and how.
It’s easy for critics to pooh-pooh movies based on Grisham
novels, especially on the grounds that the legalese is faulty.
Gee, ya think? Find me the hard-working moviegoer who wants
to plunk down $7 to hear an actual debate on, say, the merits
of tort law, and I’ll show you a person who misheard the question.
Grisham stories are rife with the stuff that makes courtroom
dramas, be it Perry Mason, L.A. Law or Law
& Order, so much fun—there’s a clear-cut bad guy (or
guys), and the only thing standing between them and getting
off scot-free is a vastly overwhelmed, deeply flawed crusader.
That person in Runaway Jury appears to be Nick, whose
evolution from man with a mission, however vague (is it the
money he’s after, or something more?), to somebody who realizes
just how far his actions fly in the face of true democracy,
is grounded, incremental and quite believable. This probably
has more to do with the fact that he’s depicted by John Cusack
than with Grisham’s writing, but Cusack is equally masterful
in depicting the kind of good-time Charlie who wants desperately
to amuse everybody as he is in playing a much more tightly
wound potential weapon. While Hackman has played this kind
of nasty guy too many times to remember, he clearly relishes
his role, giving it a downright cheerful soulnessness, especially
in a scene where he verbally trounces Rohr. For his part,
Hoffman finally ditches his usual supercilious posing and
delivers a surprisingly humane, sensitive performance. You
actually believe that his character cares about the law, and
isn’t just chewing words.
The film goes on far too long and features a too-late, too-pat
explanation of Nick’s and Marley’s motivations. Director Gary
Felder has cast solid character actors as the other members
of the jury, but without exception, they’re left to sort of
dissolve into the background once they’ve made a brief impression.
Among these are Nora Dunn as the alcoholic juror, Bill Nunn
as the money-strapped grocer, Luis Gomez as, I guess, the
Latino juror, and Jennifer Beals in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it
appearance as the statuesque juror. What, exactly, is the
point? Weisz in essence repeats her performance from Confidence,
in which she plays a con artist whose allegiances are questionable.
Is she loyal to Nick, or is she out for herself? It’s all
part of the fun, as is watching her gamely square off against
both Hackman and Hoffman with no trembling in sight. Like
so many other Grisham adaptations, Runaway Jury is
the cinematic equivalent of a beach read—but as the days get
shorter and the air so much colder, what’s wrong with that?
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Must
we suffer so: Owen and Jolie in Beyond Borders.
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Charity
Case
Beyond Borders
Directed by Martin Campbell
“The
epic tale of the turbulent romance between two star-crossed
lovers set against the world’s most dangerous hot spots” is
the concept for Beyond Borders, a politically idiotic
weepy that adheres to its marketing pitch much more closely
than to reality. Angelina Jolie is Sarah, the fun-loving newlywed
who dashes off to war-torn Ethiopia with a convoy of supply
trucks after just one look at Nick (Clive Owen), the hard-boiled
doctor who runs an African relief camp on a shoestring budget
and a lot of guts. Unfortunately, Sarah is married to a bland
Englishman (Linus Roach) who doesn’t understand why she wants
to expose herself to disease, famine, and possibly death to
prove her compassion (and neither does the audience—why not
just send a check?).
Sarah first encounters Nick when he crashes a posh benefit
she’s attending, and at which Nick’s starvation poster child
is whisked away by immigration authorities, only to die that
night on a London street. The problems of the world’s poor,
apparently, are the fault of fat-cat charity fundraisers.
Using ill and orphaned children (the effects of starvation
are computer-generated) as guilt-inducing props may the queasiest
of the film’s faults, but it’s certainly not the only one.
Whipping up a patently phony romance in the midst of great
suffering doesn’t exactly qualify as social responsibility,
either.
And responsible is what the film seems desperately to want
to be, even though the heedless actions of Sarah, and especially
the boneheaded Nick, cause catastrophe in relief camps from
Cambodia to Chechnya. But the senseless globetrotting does
allow Jolie some great wardrobe opportunities, and she looks
equally fetching in sub-Saharan white gauze or a Russian fur
hat. Certainly Nick thinks so, and he stops hammering her
on her pampered ignorance after she shows up in Cambodia just
in time for a showdown with the Khmer Rouge. Nick, who comes
off as an action junkie with a death wish, pays off the Communists
in exchange for access to vaccinate the peasants. He does
this with the covert aid of a CIA spook, which dilutes his
uncompromising morality more than a little. And in case anyone
should miss the allusions to Doctor Zhivago (and a
few other epics), the agent, Steiger, is played by Yorick
van Wageningen, a dead ringer for Zhivago’s Rod Steiger.
As the years slog by (for more than two hours), with changes
in hairstyles to indicate of the passing of time (from ’80s
to ’90s), Sarah endures her loveless marriage for the sake
of her son and dreams of the indefatigable Nick, who doesn’t
learn a thing from his close calls with doom. Owen makes a
decent effort at moderating his steely-eyed cynicism into
teary-eyed fatalism (with the help of some very noticeable
glycerin eyedrops), and Jolie is sincerely maudlin in a role
that echoes her work with humanitarian organizations, especially
when Sarah gives her big speech on the plight of the world’s
50 million refugees. But the question here isn’t whether or
not Sarah and Nick will ever find happiness together, but
why Jolie didn’t make a serious film on the causes that are
worked into this fatuous melodrama like so much shock-value
backdrop.
—Ann
Morrow
Army
of Ennui
Buffalo Soldiers
Directed by Gregor Jordan
Adapted from the satirical novel by Robert O’Connor, Buffalo
Soldiers is about miscreant soldiers who turn to criminality
as a way to relieve the boredom of being stuck on an army
base during peacetime. Although it crackles with black-humored
dialogue, the film must’ve lost something in translation;
namely, a reason for the audience to care. Graft in the military
is as old as foot rot and lousy food, and as directed by the
directionless Gregor Jordan, the film has nothing new to add
except the setting—West Germany shortly before the fall of
the Berlin Wall—and some action-film pyrotechnics.
What gives this rambling, violent satire an entertaining edge
is Joaquin Phoenix, who plays Ray Elwood, a clerk in the supply
office who sells army goods to German mobsters. Elwood buffaloes
everyone he encounters, especially his buffoonish but kindly
commander (Ed Harris), and he’s always negotiating, even while
bedding the commander’s wife (Elizabeth McGovern). Elwood
also stays in good with an M.P. drug dealer by “cooking” his
heroin for him. In a milieu full of macho hotheads, he holds
his own by avoiding aggression and remaining blasé under pressure,
while his derisively soft-spoken delivery leavens the film’s
nihilistic excesses.
It’s business as usual until Elwood and his cronies get their
hands on a truckload of high-grade weaponry worth millions
on the open market, which occurs the same day they get a new
supervisor, the hardass Sgt. Lee (Scott Glenn). Lee puts the
screws to Elwood, Elwood retaliates by making it with the
sergeant’s rebellious daughter, Robyn (Anna Paquin), and the
weapons deal goes horribly awry. By the time Elwood falls
for Robyn for real, the film is past the point of being able
to humanize itself with a fillip of romance. Opening with
the senseless death of a junkie conscript, Buffalo Soldiers
is relentlessly mean-spirited. Maybe it isn’t such a good
idea for the Army to strong-arm criminals into serving their
country, but that’s not reason enough for populating the film
with characters who are either stupid, callous, vicious, or
all three. The most interesting element, Glenn’s wily, war-hardened
sergeant, is pushed into the role of an actioner psycho. And
it’s depressing to see the beautiful McGovern tricked out
as a blowsy shrew.
Apparently, there’s supposed to be some existential absurdity
in how Elwood’s corruption sets up a chain reaction of ever-greater
venality, but it doesn’t come across. Late in the game, he
wearily explains that there’s always some war somewhere with
someone. Ennui may be a suitable excuse for him, but not for
the audience.
—Ann
Morrow
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