I Want to Run Away!

Runaway Jury (2003) showed me why I don’t like these John Grisham-style legal thrillers. I have never seen The Practice or any other legal TV show since L.A. Law and Ally McBeal went off the air, and these shows weren’t even about the courtroom. I never consciously avoided these other shows; I just never got around to watching them, just like I have never seen The West Wing or 24. Even though I love to read (even popular fiction), I have never picked up a John Grisham novel. I saw A Time to Kill (1996) and The Rainmaker (1997) back when they came out, and I remember enjoying them but thinking they were a bit overdone. I don’t avoid Grisham novels and movies because I’m a snob (I’ll be one of the first to see The DaVinci Code, after all), but simply because these thrillers generally bore me.

I know that seems improbable because these movies are all about suspense. The idea is to keep you guessing what will happen or how it will be proven, and both sides generally engage in duplicitous behavior that is exciting yet also deplorable. But these films are also kind of simplistic.

I’ll keep my comments to Runaway Jury for now because I just watched it last night. Overall, it’s a decent film featuring decent writing and decent acting. With a cast of Dustin Hoffman, John Cusack, and Gene Hackman (who I generally love), it should have been much better, though. Rachel Weisz was in it, which made it more bearable, for I think she is one of the prettiest women in movies, but she couldn’t make up for the unbelievable plot.

I know gun companies are evil, and if there is anyone who doesn’t think so, Runaway Jury sure pounds that home. I think this is one of its flaws, too. They’re way too evil here. They meet in dark smoky rooms to discuss buying juries, and they engage in all kinds of evil behavior such as breaking and entering, arson, kidnapping, etc. The head of the company doesn’t even care about the law, and he even threatens Gene Hackman, who is working for him. Gene Hackman isn’t exactly evil here—that job is left to the gun corporations—because he is what seems to be a moral relativist. He doesn’t believe in what cannot be bought or pressured. But the gun companies are evil. Just by hiring Hackman and thinking they can buy the jury, they have demonstrated their contempt for the law.

So the plot was a bit too much of good vs. evil for me, at least for a thriller like this. Is this the way all courtroom dramas are? Now I’m thinking about A Civil Action (1998), which I remember as being decent, and it seemed to be the same way. Maybe that’s why I generally don’t like them. Real life isn’t like that. Give me a conflicted character who is caught between two positions and that’s more believable. These characters here are just too bland. But then again, I love Star Wars, so maybe it's about pretense...

The only thing that redeems the film, perhaps, is that Cusack and Weisz are morally conflicted characters, at least through most of the movie. Sure, they turn out to be the good guys, but we don’t learn that until close to the end. I’m sorry if that gives away the plot, but you really should see it coming from a mile away.

Grade for Runaway Jury: 5