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Sunday, October 19, 2003

Same Old Trash and Mystic River Is Trash Too

If a movie is hyped, 90% odd it is bad.

The Moviegoers vs. 'Runaway Jury'
By Richard von Busack

YOUR HONOR, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. In the case of the motion
picture Runaway Jury, we petition for a verdict of "Wait until video." As
it has been seen in precedents, such as the case of The Moviegoers vs. The
Pelican Brief, A Time to Kill, etc., it has been established that John
Grisham novels are exceedingly difficult to unravel into a satisfactory
movie. The defendant argues that Runaway Jury has given fair warning by
crediting four separate screenwriters in the advertising. I ask the jury,
who can read that tiny print?

Moreover, your honor, in creating an artificial buzz about the sparks
flying between the leads Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman, the defendant has
attempted to pass off said Runaway Jury as quote a suspense thriller
unquote from quote a master storyteller unquote.

Your honor, is the scarcely believable plot of Runaway Jury evidence of
"master" storytelling? Allow me to recap: in New Orleans, a widow files a
civil suit against a weapons manufacturer. Said company produced the
assault rifle that took the lives of one stockbroker and a group of his
fellow office workers who didn't join in the class action, for some reason.

Enter a cloven-hoofed professional jury tamperer from out of town, one
Rankin Fitch, played by Gene Hackman. It is Fitch's business to use
surveillance to blackmail jurors into favorable verdicts.

His opponent in the case, one Wendell Rohr (played by Mr. Hoffman) is a
warmhearted mench, the antithesis of the Satanic Fitch.

Between these figures comes an interloper, a video-game-store employee
played by John Cusack. No ordinary unlucky duck, drafted into the jury
pool. No, he--and his girlfriend Rachel Weisz, have a mysterious plan to
shake both attorneys down for millions, while tampering with the jury on
their own time.

Said jurors are portrayed as salt-of-the-earth types, easily turned by a
master manipulator. However, in a five minute long scene added later
between Hoffman and Hackman in a men's restroom, Hoffman stands up as
representative of the little guy. The evil Fitch, by contrast, derides the
American people as Barcalounger-ridden cable TV watchers.

I put it to the court that Runaway Jury's thoroughly fake populism coats an
essentially cynical view of working-class weathervanes, ready to be blown
in any direction the wind blows. I put it to the court that the only reason
why Hoffman's Rohr didn't seek solace from a statue of Thomas Jefferson
afterward is that there wasn't one handy.

While Runaway Jury is stale, there's never anything stale about Hackman.
Oppressing widows and insulting Democrats is a job he accomplishes with an
avidity that defies his years.

Maybe I'm just a backward old country movie critic. But where I come from,
your honor, we like to see the villain outsmarted, not out-hearted. Runaway
Jury traffics in every courtroom clich�, including a mawkish grab for the
jury at the end of the film with a reel of a child's birthday party. The
issues in this issue film could use a hearing. And few buttons are hotter
than gun control. Runaway Jury is an allegedly controversial film that
handles its topic with tongs. I rest my case.

Sheldon (Shelly) Waxman, Writer/Lawyer
"The Black Messiah Murders," Sam Cohen #1
"Piranhas On the Loose," Sam Cohen #2
"In the Teeth of the Wind,"
"All Anybody Needs to Know About Independent Contracting"
PURCHASE AT MY WEBSITE: http://thelawyer.info/ OR Call Iuniverse toll free 1-877-823-9235

posted by FLoA # 10/19/2003 10:14:14 PM

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