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RUNAWAY
JURY DEPICTS THE NRA IN A JURY TAMPERING FRENZY
 Early
in Runaway Jury, we are told that
30,000 Americans die and 100,000 are injured each year by
guns, statistics that do not stop the National Rifle Association
from serving as the public relations front for an industry
that rakes in $2 billion each year. Directed by Gary Fleder
and based on the novel by John Grisham that targeted Big
Tobacco, the film begins with the deaths of eleven members
of a firm by a disgruntled former employee who used an automatic
weapon that was purchased with questionable legality. Two
years later, a widow, Vanessa Lembeck (played by Jennifer
Beals), decides to sue the manufacturer of the weapon, Vicksburg.
The attorney for the plaintiff is Wendell Rohr (played by
Dustin Hoffman), and the gun company's attorney is Durwood
Cable (played by Bruce Davison). Since a victory for the
plaintiff could easily lead to other suits, eventually bankrupting
firearms manufacturers, Vicksburg hires Rankin Fitch (played
by Gene Hackman) to fix the jury. However, one juror, Nick
Easter (played by John Cusack), is in league with his longtime
girlfriend, Marlee (played by Rachel Weisz), who arranges
to inform both attorneys that the jury is for sale. With
clever interpersonal skills, Easter develops his role to
be in a position to sway the jury, and Runaway Jury is quite
insightful in revealing how jurors interact. Meanwhile Marlee
contacts both lawyers, demanding a nonnegotiable $10 million
(later $15 million) as the price for fixing the outcome of
the jury's deliberations. By the time the film ends, one
side has indeed swallowed the bait and paid the price. Why
Marlee and Nick seek to profit from jury tampering, which
they pulled off before in other towns, is also revealed in
the otherwise predictable ending. The Political Film Society
has nominated Runaway Jury for
best film on democracy and best film exposé not only
for trotting forth the statistics about gun-related deaths
in a sleeker manner than Bowling
for Columbine (2002) but also for demonstrating
that there is a science to jury selection and even jury tampering.
Ominously, the film's tagline is that "Trials are too
important to be decided by juries." However, the film
appears to challenge investigative reporters to find out
whether the NRA may have been financing pro-gun films, such
as the recent Open Range. That
challenge remains. MH
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Runaway
Jury
by John Grisham
Millions
of dollars are at stake in a huge tobacco-company
case in Biloxi, and the jury's packed with people
who have dirty little secrets. A mysterious young
man takes subtle control of the jury as the defense
watches helplessly, but they soon realize that
he in turn is controlled by an even more mysterious
young woman. Lives careen off course as they
bend everyone in the case to their will.
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AN
IRISH JOURNALIST CHANGES THE LAW FROM HER GRAVE
 On
June 26, 1996, thirty-six-year-old Irish journalist Veronica
Guerin was gunned down while driving her car
on a motorway outside Dublin. The film Veronica Guerin, directed
by Joel Schumacher, tells why she was assassinated and how
her death changed the political landscape in Ireland. After
depicting the scene in which she was killed, the story moves
back two years. Walking on the streets of Dublin, Veronica
Guerin (played by Cate Blanchett) finds discarded syringes
used as toys by toddlers. Nosing around, she finds teenagers
stoned on drugs, and she suspects that the influx of drugs
is associated with Ireland's skyrocketing crime rate. She also
discovers a weekly march by parents in the syringe-infested
neighborhood against drugs, but few are involved. In her news
stories, Veronica attempts to raise consciousness of the need
to crack down on the drug traffic. Her police informants cooperate,
but the constitution and the law are not sufficient to enable
the authorities to apprehend notorious druglords, and her pressure
on a member of parliament to change the law is brushed aside.
Her informant in the crime world, John "Coach" Traynor
(played by Ciarán Hinds), gives her additional information,
but he is only interested in embarrassing one gang so that
his gang will benefit. Undeterred after she is shot in the
leg by an unknown assailant, she confronts a top kingpin, John
Gilligan (played by Gerard McSorley), who beats her up and
then threatens to kidnap her six-year-old old son, rape him,
and kill her if she either exposes him in the newspaper or
presses charges in court. Veronica, nevertheless, goes to court,
but Gilligan gets a delay in the arraignment and an associate
boasts that more delays will occur in the future. A few days
later, on June 26, Veronica is shot dead. (Titles at the end
of the film indicate that more than 200 journalists have died
in recent years.) The violence that she sustained previously
had made her a national heroine, so her death made her a national
martyr. The neighborhood marchers grow to thousands. The constitution
is amended. And parliament passes appropriate legislation to
seize the assets of suspected druglords, many of whom are then
apprehended, stripped of their assets, and imprisoned. The
crime rate falls. "Coach" flees to Portugal, where
he fights extradition. Gilligan flees to England, is extradited,
and in 2001 imprisoned for twenty-eight years. A remake of
the less popular Irish film When the Sky Falls (2000),
Veronica Guerin illustrates what can be done to stop drug trafficking
in a homogeneous country, thus containing a message very different
from Traffic (2000), Blow (2001),
and Our Lady of the Assassins (2001).
Accordingly, the Political Film Society has nominated Veronica
Guerin as best film on democracy and best film
exposé of 2003. MH
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