ON SCREEN: A Time To Kill
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eye WEEKLY July 25, 1996
Toronto's arts newspaper .....free every Thursday
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ON SCREEN ON SCREEN
A TIME TO KILL
Starring Matthew McConaughey, Samuel L. Jackson and Sandra Bullock.
Screenplay by Akiva Goldsman based on the novel by John Grisham.
Directed by Joel Schumacher. (AA)
(ee of 5 eyes)
by
DENIS SEGUIN
A Time To Kill, the latest adaptation of a John Grisham novel, is an
action film with "serious" pretensions. It raises a crucial issue in
American life -- "Can a black man receive a fair trial from a white
jury?" -- and then provides us with a trial without moral shading. You
know the routine: there's only one answer and that's the Right Answer.
This wouldn't be so bad except for a small snag: the film puts aside
the black defendant to concentrate on his white lawyer. Yet again,
we're left with a story about how hard racism is on white folk -- with
the bonus of seeing Sandra Bullock in a vintage Porsche.
In rural Mississippi, a 10-year-old black girl is raped, beaten and
left for dead. Her two scum-of-the-earth assailants are arrested and,
while awaiting trial, are shot dead by the girl's father, the
upstanding Carl Lee Hailey (Samuel L. Jackson). A young white lawyer,
the dashing Jake Brigance (Matthew McConaughey) takes Hailey's case
and in so doing brings upon himself the wrath of the Ku Klux Klan.
Black and white and red all over.
With no moral dilemma to distract him, director Joel Schumacher
strings together stock scenes of legal hurdles and racist terrorism,
as the town is polarized by the trial. Brigance's elders frown on his
decision to handle the case while the Klan employs subtle tactics of
intimidation, like burning down his house.
Meanwhile, in contrast to the efficient prosecution machine, our hero
assembles the usual rag-tag band of legal accomplices, including a
keener law student (Bullock), his rascally pal (Oliver Platt) and his
mentor (Donald Sutherland), a once-great lawyer disbarred for violence
done in the name of civil rights. These are the sort of people who can
get loaded on tequila the night before a trial, and, next day, absorb
precedents in case law simply by holding a textbook.
McConaughey makes an alluring lead, and for a while you're happy to
watch his callow swaggering as he banters with Bullock and Platt. But
during his few scenes one-on-one with his client, he is eclipsed by
Jackson. And in the pivotal summation, with the script exhausted, he
is left to twist in the wind.
There are surprising touches of cynicism -- as when black activists,
hoping to make Hailey a martyr for its cause, attempts to usurp his
case from Brigance -- but such moments are no less symptomatic of
Hollywood tokenism; they are hiccups in the smooth flow toward
righteousness.
You never wonder how you might have voted were you on that jury; but
then you're never asked.
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