Runaway Jury, would most likely please alot of people I know whose favorite movies are courtroom dramas. I'm not one of those folks who like nothing more than to sit and eat popcorn while they "handle the truth," though now that I think about it, my all time favorite movie is probably To Kill a Mockingbird, which I suppose is technically a courtroom drama. In any case I am a fan of Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman and interestingly enough this is the first time they've ever appeared in a film together. Where's Kevin Bacon when you need him?

So together at last, along with a stellar supporting cast, you'd expect a Grisham-adapted courtroom drama with these two legends going head to head to be quite an event - but if I'm any juror of such things, I'm pretty well hung. Grisham novels clip along pretty smartly because of his light-speed prose and his proven talent for building suspense out of stacks of words and sentences. I can't say I've read more than half of his novels (I got started on this one, but got deflected by something else and thus it's laying under my bed, less than half read). In any case, I'd say his greatest gift as a writer is offering a character that most readers can identify with, and root for. The sort of likable everyman that keeps you from taking off your glasses and turning off the bedside lamp at a reasonable hour.

This gift typically translates even better to the big screen where you can slap Tom Cruises face on this guy and trot him around. Hell, I even liked Matt Damon's fresh face in the Rainmaker, though I think this was a dissenting opinion in that case. Therein lies my second biggest gripe with Runaway Jury, I didn't particularly like any of these characters. I imagine I was supposed to side with John Cusack (one usually does), but his character isn't the "likable everyman" or the "eccentric underdog" as is usually the case, (Cusack doesn't play crooked that well - I'll hand you The Grifters, but that was an overrated film).

If ever there were a man who was born to be in movies about the legal profession it's Gene Hackman. He pretty much steals the show in the role of a high-paid jury consultant whose job it is to load the box with sympathetic ears toward the cause of whoever hires him. No matter how slimy Gene Hackman's character might be he usually manages to be likable (exhibit A: his pathos-charged performance in The Firm, and don't get me started on his overlooked Oscar-worthy turn in The Royal Tennenbaums). He's just a force of nature in this film and even manages to get away with spouting off platitudes like "Trials are too important to be left up to juries!"

You're not supposed to like him in this film, he's the face that the producers of this movie paint on the body of it's ultimate bad guy, and it's because of Runaway Jury's all-too-obvious political agenda that it (quite ironically) shoots itself in the foot. The big civil case on trial in the book involves big-tobacco, but strangely in the movie the names have been changed to indict the guilty. This film wears it's anti-gun message on it's sleeve in a manner that's pretty bad form for everyone involved. I don't particularly care one way or the other about gun laws, but I don't like to have my intelligence insulted. Maybe the makers of this film didn't want to make another movie along the same lines as The Insider, but Bowling For Columbine has already been made as well.

Hackman goes about his juror manipulation, in a way that feels like something out of Minority Report, (all kinds of unconstitutional high-tech dirt-digging, civil liberty violations galore all being bankrolled by the Pro-gun interests. Which of course is my major gripe here, if I want to hear a sermon, I can go to church - if I want a suspense-filled courtroom potboiler I go see a Grisham movie. As I alluded to above, I don't have any real well-thought-out opinions about gun-control, but I know when a movie stops being entertaining is when it's gets up on a soap box.

Dustin Hoffman is the guy to root for here - the noble lawyer who wins cases the old-fashioned way, by presenting evidence to a jury in a professionally compelling manner. He's got no use for a "jury consultant?" That is until he gets a load of Hackman's gamesmanship, then he goes and hires one in the person of the likable Jeremy Piven. Ordinarily I would have jumped at the chance to root for Hoffman, but at this point I'm not sure if I'm comfortable marching in time with his character's "anti-gun" crusade.

Which, of course is not for wont of acting skills on the part of Hoffman, but his role rings a little hollow when you consider that Grisham didn't write this character, this guy was conjured up as a banner waving poster boy for this left-wing Hollywood machine. You see, I'm pissed off at this movie because I'm starting to sound like that Savage Nation guy, when all I really want is to be entertained. I want to rest my feet for 90 minutes and maybe even sit on the edge of my seat, because of the enormous suspense that this movie that I paid 10 bucks to see is supposed to deliver. Grisham is almost always good for 7 or 8 of those bucks.

The wild card in this deck, the big plot-thickener that's supposed to captivate our attention so we don't notice the films political BiaS, is tossed in courtesy of jury member Cusack and his accomplice Rachel Weis. By whatever means he thinks he has at his disposal he lets it be known to both Defense and Prosecution, through pay-phone calls by Weis that he can deliver the desired verdict to whichever concern is willing to pony up the most dough. His opening offer is 10 Million.

It's certainly not implausible in this day and age to believe that this sort of thing could be carried off. Also timely is this jury-consulting business with it's violation of privacy. These are salient issues in a political climate where matters of National Security are starting to encroach upon our rights of privacy. I'll say that these matters were dealt with in good taste in Runaway Jury. Still in terms of film making smarts and actual courtroom drama and behind the scenes thrills and chills Runaway Jury might have been better titled Walkaway in no particular hurry. At no point in this film did directed Gary Fleder manage to generate any real momentum or tension, sure there's the a few dodgy bits where we we're supposed to worry about the safety of Rachel Weis' character. And there is a classic first-ever scene between Hoffman and Hackman in Men's room that almost made the whole misbegotten project worth everyone's time. Y'know I was thinking they did Scarecrow together, but that was Pacino, Hoffman was Ratzo Rizzo - pretty close.