| Home | Movies A-M | Movies N-Z | News |
Poster (c) 20th Century Fox
Whenever a movie based on a book, I try to either read the book before the movie or read the book after the movie. I had read John Grisham’s The Runaway Jury before I had heard that a movie was being made, and really liked the book. Like most adaptations, it doesn’t stand up to the book at all. In fact, it was extremely close to the book except in the most important aspect: due to 1999’s The Insider, about a cigarette trial, the movie was changed from cigarettes to guns, which is a harder case to prove.
In the opening scene, Jacob Woods (Dylan McDermott) is shot to death in his office. Two years later, his widow Celeste (Joanna Going) sues the gun company that made the gun. Legendary Rankin Fitch (Gene Hackman) is set to defend against Wendell Rohr (Dustin Hoffman) in the trial. They manipulate both sides, especially Fitch. When it comes time to pick the jury, Fitch knows exactly who to pick, due to their exhaustive research. One of them is Nicholas Easter (John Cusack), who seems to be running this whole thing with Marlee (Rachel Weisz), controlling it on both the inside and outside.
For once, reading the book before was a liability. It really hindered how much the movie affected me, since, as I said before, not much was changed from the book to movie, except a few things taken out to make the runtime shorter. Ergo, I knew what was going to happen and I wasn’t surprised by anything, although I would have been if I hadn’t read the book. Also, that took away from some of the excitement that I knew I would have felt if it was fresh.
That, of course, didn’t take away from any of the powerful acting jobs done by everyone, especially Hackman. I have yet to see him to a subpar or even mediocre acting job, and here is no exception. No one can shout like he can. Hoffman doesn’t quite live up to his early work in such movies as The Graduate and Midnight Cowboy, but he’s ok anyway. Cusack yet again pulls off his good-but-not-great performance, while Weisz seems to be almost devoid of emotion. When your biggest films are The Mummy series, however, you can’t expect too much from them.
When you go into Runaway Jury when you haven’t read the book, you’ll really like it a lot. If you have read the book, just pay attention to the powerhouse acting.
Rated PG-13 for violence, language and thematic elements.
Review Date: October 18, 2003