 Tagline: Trials are too important to be decided by juries. From master storyteller John Grisham and the director of Don't Say A Word comes a taut suspense-thriller that "grabs hold of you and never lets go" (Philadelphia Metro). In their first film together, screen legends Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman face off in this electrifying nail-biter about a ruthless jury consultant who'll do anything to win. With lives and millions of dollars at stake, the fixer plays a deadly cat-and-mouse game with a jury member (John Cusack) and a mysterious woman (Rachel Weisz) who offer to "deliver" the verdict to the highest bidder. Packed with danger, intrigue and pulse-pounding twists and turns, Runaway Jury rules! Storyline: Wendell Rohr is a torts lawyer taking on the gun lobby. Rankin Fitch is the jury consultant for the Defendants and between them the battle is for the hearts and minds of the jury. But there is someone on the inside. Nicholas Easter is a juror with a girlfriend, Marlee, on the outside. they have a past ..... and their own agenda. Written by johnno.r@xtra.co.nz Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Michael Reuben on May 14, 2012 -- If jury duty were as interesting as it's portrayed in Runaway Jury, people wouldn't be so eager to avoid it. Unfortunately, most cases don't have the dramatic heft of the anti-gun manufacturer suit portrayed in the film (changed from the John Grisham novel's anti-tobacco suit after The Insider pre-empted the subject). Most judges don't run as efficient a courtroom as Bruce McGill's Judge Harkin, and most trial lawyers aren't nearly as entertaining (or well prepared) as the attorneys portrayed by Dustin Hoffman and Bruce Davison. And if there really is a sleek shark of a jury consultant like Gene Hackman's Rankin Fitch, complete with an army of hi-tech experts, then he'd be so expensive that even the biggest corporations wouldn't pay for him unless their very existence was at stake. In reality, the typical jury consultant is more likely to resemble the low-rent grunt played by Jeremy Piven, who all but volunteers his services to the plaintiff, because he's trying to build a reputation. And most cases aren't worth enough to afford even him. But no one ever made an entertaining thriller by sticking to reality. Besides, director Gary Fleder has said repeatedly (and I agree) that Runaway Jury isn't a courtroom drama; it's a film about a con. The courtroom is just the locale where the grifters work their swindle. When I first started in law practice, I was shocked at the number of senior trial lawyers who told me never to go to court expecting truth or justice. Eventually I came to understand their cynicism as a realistic appraisal of the limits of any human institution, which always falls short of its ideals. Runaway Jury simply takes that notion to its logical conclusion by making a jury verdict the McGuffin of a plot in which everyone is after a particular result. Some pursue it by traditional means. Others take alternate paths of a more, shall we say, "creative" nature. A brief opening sequence depicts an attack on a New Orleans brokerage office by a crazed former employee, who fatally guns down eleven people with an assault weapon, including Jacob Woods (Dylan McDermott). Two years later, Jacobs' widow, Celeste (Joanna Going), is about to go to trial in a suit against Vicksburg Firearms, the manufacturer of the gun used in the attack. Her attorney is an experienced trial lawyer, Wendell Rohr (Hoffman). Vicksburg's lead counsel is Durwood Cable (Davison), but the real firepower is one of the world's leading jury consultants, Rankin Fitch (Hackman), who has traveled the country working cases for gun manufacturers. Fitch earns top dollar, because he will do whatever it takes to ensure that the jury selected to hear the case against Vicksburg will be inclined to render a verdict in its favor. His methods range from the legal (demographic studies, handwriting analysis, psychology, observation of body language) to the borderline (surveillance, background checks) to the clearly illegal (hacking of credit card receipts, theft of confidential medical files, direct intimidation). Fitch isn't admitted to the bar, and he never stands up in court, but he's the one running Vicksburg's case—a fact that Wendell Rohr doesn't begin to appreciate until he's approached by a newcomer in the field, Lawrence Green (Piven), who wants to even the odds a little (and build his resumé) by working as Rohr's jury consultant. A wild card in the mix is Nick Easter (John Cusack), a clerk in a video game store who receives a summons for jury duty on the Woods case and, at least on the surface, has the usual reaction, which is "how can I get out of it?" But Nick has another agenda, and it starts to emerge after he's selected as Juror Number Nine. At about the same time, both Fitch and Rohr begin receiving messages and phone calls from a woman (Rachel Weisz) who identifies herself as "Marlee" and claims that she's in a position to "sell" one of them the Woods jury for $10 million. They don't believe her at first, but Marlee arranges impressive demonstrations of her ability to influence the jurors' behavior. One of them involves a surprise showing of patriotic sentiment; another involves having a juror sympathetic to the side who has defied her thrown off the panel. The reactions of Rohr and Fitch when, at different moments, each of them realizes that the jury is truly being controlled by an outside party are high points of the film. That Runaway Jury isn't a courtroom drama should be obvious, because, as the trial progresses, we keep cutting away from it to the ever more elaborate cat-and-mouse games being conducted in the surrounding environs of New Orleans. With Fitch's well-equipped crew, much of this looks like sophisticated espionage, but as Fitch feels matters slipping further from his control, he quickly descends into old-fashioned thuggery, including breaking and entering, blackmail, kidnapping, false imprisonment and arson. By the time the moment of decision arrives, and each side has to decide whether to pay up, no one really cares about the quality of the plaintiff's evidence. Runaway Jury benefits from a remarkable ensemble, especially among the jurors, most of whom have limited screen time but make the most of it to create a strong impression of lives beyond jury duty. You can't appreciate the impact of the various manipulations unless they're being directed at people who feel real. In addition to Jennifer Beales, former SNL regular Nora Dunn and Cliff Curtis (Live Free or Die Hard), the jury includes reliable character actors Bill Nunn, Rhoda Griffs (the registration lady in The Hunger Games), Luis Guzmán and Gerry Bamman as Herman Grimes, a blind man who insists on doing jury service and can quote precedent from memory in support of his right to do so. Bruce McGill, who was the sheriff in My Cousin Vinny and whose extensive credits go all the way back to Animal House, plays the no-nonsense Judge Harkin. But of course the casting that dominated Runaway Jury's marketing campaign was Hackman and Hoffman, life-long friends and former roommates and acting classmates who had never before appeared together in a film. An entirely new scene for Rohr and Fitch had to be written to give these two pros screen time together, and it's a great scene. Rohr is the angry idealist, Fitch the amoral opportunist, and they tear at each other with all they've got. The irony is that both of them are about to be rendered irrelevant. Lawyers making closing arguments usually try to flatter jurors by talking about the jury's crucial role in administering justice and the historical importance of trial by jury. But when you look at American popular culture, the institution of the jury doesn't come off so well. For every Twelve Angry Men, there's always a To Kill a Mockingbird, in which the jury clearly reaches the wrong verdict. Anatomy of Murder, which is still one of the most technically accurate portrayals of a criminal trial on film, primarily shows how the facts disappear under the spin and manipulation of the lawyers for both sides, and in the end it's very much in doubt whether the right result has been achieved. The Verdict is a magnificent morality play, but it's so riddled with errors (many of them deliberate) that it begs for a sequel called The Reversal. And let's not forget Perry Mason, who, despite being the greatest defense lawyer ever to try a fictional case, had so little faith in juries that he never let them deliberate; instead, he always got the real murderer to confess on the stand. (Cousin Vinny did much the same thing by getting the state to drop the charges.) So the cynicism about juries reflected in Grisham's novel and the screenplay adaptation for Runaway Jury is nothing new. Grisham and the screenwriters simply expanded the number of players trying to push the jurors' buttons and move them one way or the other—by any means necessary. The result may not be literally true to life, but it's an apt metaphor for the cacophony of voices vying to influence each of us in important decisions (how to vote, what to think, where to spend our money). And it makes for an interesting battle of dramatic personalities and an entertaining film. Highly recommended. Cast Notes: John Cusack (Nicholas Easter), Gene Hackman (Rankin Fitch), Dustin Hoffman (Wendell Rohr), Rachel Weisz (Marlee), Bruce Davison (Durwood Cable), Bruce McGill (Judge Harkin), Jeremy Piven (Lawrence Green), Nick Searcy (Doyle), Stanley Anderson (Henry Jankle), Cliff Curtis (Frank Herrera), Nestor Serrano (Janovich), Leland Orser (Lamb), Jennifer Beals (Vanessa Lembeck), Gerry Bamman (Herman Grimes), Joanna Going (Celeste Wood). User Comment: bluewavetraveler from Boone IA, 10 October 2004 • Well acted yet flimsy adaptation of the John Grisham novel lacks a well rounded script to carry itself but has an amazing cast that lifts this mediocre film past its problems and into respectability. The script has way too many loop holes in logic to even take what you are seeing seriously and the directing lacks a sharp narrative to get across what it's trying to say. The acting is the only major thing that this film excels on and with out it, this would have been a cable movie of the week at best. Gene Hackman is great as a jury consultant who would stop at nothing to win a case and Rachel Weisz is amazing as his adversary in and out of the courtroom. Dustin Hoffman is great as well but he is not in the movie as much as advertise and John Cusack is decent for the role he has. The biggest fault the movie does have is the fact that certain plot points disappear during the course of the film as well as characters. It's a great way to spend two hours of your time, especially with the great performances of Gene Hackman and Rachel Weisz to keep you glued to what is happening but the movie has a lot of glaring problems that makes it hard to sit though in certain parts. Summary: Flimsy yet well acted. User Comment: BigHardcoreRed from Calimesa, California, 4 December 2004 • Not since Primal Fear have I seen a court room thriller that was really good. Given the actors, I suppose you can't really go wrong. Usually I can find some actor or actress that wasn't very good, bothered me in some way or was flat out horrible. This movie featured superb acting by all those involved. Even Jeremy Piven (who I can't help but picture as the Dean in Old School or his characters from PCU or Very Bad Things) delivered a respectable performance, and very different from the other movies mentioned. Runaway Jury doesn't throw in a lot of needless plot twists and unexpected happenings just for the sake of throwing off or fooling the viewer. In fact, it pretty much goes in the direction you think it will, with only a couple of exceptions which are needed. I'm usually the type that likes my movies to get it all done in around 90 minutes or so. Seems to me that most movies that go over 2 hours have a lot of needless "filler" material for no real reason, which, more often than not, results in slow, dragging scenes in the movie or just a boring movie altogether. This particular movie clocked in at just over 2 hours and used every minute wisely. Nothing boring and nothing seemed to drag on forever. I found the beginning with the jury selection particularly interesting. I thought the whole concept of knowing how to get exactly who you want on your jury, even before they actually show up to jury duty, was a little mind blowing. After seeing those scenes, I knew it was going to be a great movie. I highly recommend this movie, especially if you enjoyed movies like Primal Fear, although this is a completely different movie with different kinds of surprises. Overall, Gene Hackman stole the show in this one and proves why he's been working in movies and television for over 40 years now. I give this 9 out of 10. Summary: Awesome Performances by Hackman, Cusack, Hoffman & Weisz. IMDb Rating (02/18/12): 7.1/10 from 43,751 users
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