KDHX Film Review - Runaway Jury

Directed by Gary Fleder
Reviewed by Martha K. Baker

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Neither a courtroom drama nor a thriller, Runaway Jury; is both. The film is based on a novel by John Grisham, so anyone who’s ever read his books, which includes almost everyone who’s ever sat on an airplane, knows that the plot is going to be complex, that the story is going to be a good one. And even if you’ve never read John Grisham but only seen the movies based on his books, including The Firm and The Pelican Brief, you know the same thing, that his stories are rich and liberal and convincing.

Runaway Jury; begins with an emotional appeal: a boy’s birthday party where the lad is serenaded by his doting father. The next day, the father is blown away by a gunman, who invaded his stockbrokers’ firm. A year later, the widow brings a civil suit against the gun company that supplied the murderer’s weapon. That’s the back story. The real story begins with the jury selection, only Grisham makes it clear that there’s more to this selection than simply answering one’s civic duty.

In a warehouse in the French Quarter of New Orleans, the defense counsel’s consultant, Rankin Fitch, has set up a network for information retrieval on anyone who might be considered for this jury. It’s his opinion that “trials are too important to be left up to juries.” It doesn’t really matter who the counsel himself is. The counsel for the plaintiff, however, is Wendall Rohr, a man with morals. “This time,” he says, “the gun industry will dance.”

And there’s one other component in this plot: one of the members of the jury seems to have his own agenda, one he’s running with a woman on the outside. Nick Easter seems not to want even to be on this jury – it’s going to get in the way of a big computer game he wants to play for money. But Nick Easter isn’t the Gen-Xer he seems to be.

Director Gary Fleder, who also directed Don’t Say a Word, plays with cuts and overlapping sounds during the voir dire process before the trial. He has a marvelous cast to work with. Dustin Hoffman is Rohr, and he does kind of an Ian Holm bit with the part. Gene Hackman is Fitch, and Hackman sharpens every edge of this evil man. John Cusack, who is one of the finest actors in films today, makes of Nick Easter the very complicated person the character is. Cusack genuinely plays the part rather than playing himself. Rachel Weisz is excellent as his partner Marlee, the wily woman without fear who’s convinced that anyone can be gotten to.

Runaway Jury; is dense and intense. It’s a good story, and if only half of it is true, it’s downright scary.

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