Runaway Jury based on a John Grisham novel is an entertaining but barking nuts movie.
Gene Hackman plays a jury fixer. He and his team analyse potential jurors and figure out whether they will be best for their clients by using various analytical and psychological techniques. If that does not work they will stoop to blackmail, breaking and entering and even arson as well as the old standards of bugging people, illegal wiretaps and taking hidden cameras to the courtroom.
Dustin Hoffman is an old fashioned, fight the good cause, liberal attorney. He lacks the box of tricks that his well funded opponents have and believes in things like justice and the law.
Hoffman represents a client that is taking on the gun lobby and Hackman has been hired by the gun lobby to control the jury. John Cusack is a juror with an agenda, he has tried very to get on the jury and is assisted by Rachel Weisz. Hackman distrusts him and he is right to do so as Wiesz and Cusack have hatched a plan to show that they control the jury and therefore the highest bidder will get the verdict they want, but we know that there is more to this than money.
The movie is less a courtroom thriller and more a suspense about jury rigging as we see Hackman and his team in action. How they have never been caught is beyond belief because it only takes one disgruntled person on his team to spill the beans and it would mean all the cases he was ever involved in would be reopened. Right at the beginning he decides someone who missed a flight is no longer needed. Way to go to keep your illegal activities a secret.
Hoffman also gets a jury selector on board but he is more legitimate and therefore less interesting and does very little in the film.
The film is enjoyably entertaining but has so many plot holes. Hoffman has no real case or evidence against the gun manufacturers and the film seems to think that just by making them look arrogant and slimy is enough. The jurors seem to be caricatures with one of them believing that just because life was unfair to him, it should be unfair to everyone and thats not how juries work. If it did they would had been abolished years ago.
The film has several writers credited so you can guess its been through many rewrites just to get the screenplay in shape. Credit to the director to make a decent film out of it and the actors for pulling it off.
Gene Hackman plays a jury fixer. He and his team analyse potential jurors and figure out whether they will be best for their clients by using various analytical and psychological techniques. If that does not work they will stoop to blackmail, breaking and entering and even arson as well as the old standards of bugging people, illegal wiretaps and taking hidden cameras to the courtroom.
Dustin Hoffman is an old fashioned, fight the good cause, liberal attorney. He lacks the box of tricks that his well funded opponents have and believes in things like justice and the law.
Hoffman represents a client that is taking on the gun lobby and Hackman has been hired by the gun lobby to control the jury. John Cusack is a juror with an agenda, he has tried very to get on the jury and is assisted by Rachel Weisz. Hackman distrusts him and he is right to do so as Wiesz and Cusack have hatched a plan to show that they control the jury and therefore the highest bidder will get the verdict they want, but we know that there is more to this than money.
The movie is less a courtroom thriller and more a suspense about jury rigging as we see Hackman and his team in action. How they have never been caught is beyond belief because it only takes one disgruntled person on his team to spill the beans and it would mean all the cases he was ever involved in would be reopened. Right at the beginning he decides someone who missed a flight is no longer needed. Way to go to keep your illegal activities a secret.
Hoffman also gets a jury selector on board but he is more legitimate and therefore less interesting and does very little in the film.
The film is enjoyably entertaining but has so many plot holes. Hoffman has no real case or evidence against the gun manufacturers and the film seems to think that just by making them look arrogant and slimy is enough. The jurors seem to be caricatures with one of them believing that just because life was unfair to him, it should be unfair to everyone and thats not how juries work. If it did they would had been abolished years ago.
The film has several writers credited so you can guess its been through many rewrites just to get the screenplay in shape. Credit to the director to make a decent film out of it and the actors for pulling it off.