For all the good things Joel Schumacher's "A Time to Kill" provides, above all, an Oscar-worthy performance of Samuel L. Jackson, too many flaws in the writing altered what could have been a gripping and emotionally engaging experience.
First, could the bad guys be any badder? I know these things happen but talk about 'overkill', in one minute, you get all the racist redneck cliche's, the Confederate flag, the pick-up truck, the booze, and the two villains going all 'buahahaha' on the screen. The rape was shocking enough to provoke an immediate reaction; did it really need all that 'dressing'? And didn't we have enough with the two rapists so we also had to have a KKK booster shoot to tell us that there's no one of redeeming value in the 'victims' side, who could condemn the rape, while still mourning the human losses.
I know subtlety isn't Schumacher's strongest suit but he had the perfect set-up, a father murdering the men who raped his daughter was enough, and all the film needed was to build on this, not to add extra elements reminding how racism still prevails in the South, we got the idea. So, instead of dealing with the pain that could prevail in both sides, instead of having scenes in the courtroom reminding us that 'an eye for an eye' doesn't stand for justice, and make that the core of the debate, the film was just about racism. Writer Akiva Goldman was so blinded by his own 'personal' crusade that he didn't think the story could have been tackled from a more challenging and, say, neutral perspective, asking legitimate questions about 'vigilante' justice.
I read many comments saying "if I was the father, I would have blown their heads off or made them suffer first", but the father didn't kill them as soon as he got a chance, which could have been an 'immediate' reaction, he anticipated a verdict and executed them. We only assume he was right if we take for granted that these men wouldn't have had the right sentence, and this is a certitude the script desperately tries to deliver. But had a prosecutor delivered a similar speech as the climactic one, mentioning all the graphic and disgusting details about the little girl's rape, are we to assume that the jury would have acquitted these two men or given them a suspended sentence? If that's the case, then it's hopeless.
But I resisted and resented that idea. I refuse to believe that there would have been parents in the jury room who'd have felt any sympathy for the rapists. In fact, it's pretty much a MacGuffin, we're supposed to believe that's how the Law works in order to understand the father's action. Movies like "In Cold Blood", "Inherit the Wind" or "Judgment at Nuremeberg" raised thought- provoking questions. "A Time to Kill" provides the good question, but, as if it didn't trust our intelligence enough, it also gives the answer and the arguments, too. And instead of being a confrontation between two disturbing realities, a horrendous crime and a questionable act of vengeance, it becomes your routinely battle between good and evil, and the journey of the young lawyer Brigance, facing burning crosses and houses while his entourage is harassed and threatened.
We have to get through these cliché scenes where he contemplates failure, the moment where his wife (Ashley Judd) reproaches him to spend too much time on this case (boy, did I cringe on this one), where his secretary (Brenda Ficker) tells him he's gone too far, and the "case is lost" moment because the attorney unveiled the past of a key witness. Such a story deserved better than this stuff we've seen over and over again. Basically, apart from Jackson and McConaughey, there's no single three-dimensional character in the film, Sandra Bullock is the wannabe assistant who miraculously provides all the needed information (especially to the audience) and when she's the victim of the most brutal assault, what does she say when Brigance visits her in the hospital? "I had to do this, so you could call me Ellen", how cute!
The one character who could have added some nuance was the cop played by Chris Cooper, who lost his leg in the fusillade. "I would have done the same" he says, I could buy that, but did he have to add "he's a hero, turn him loose", would you call a hero someone who cut your leg off? But this is only a critic on the form; the writing undermines the message more than anything. I thought "Shaft" had a sort of pro-vigilante message and I hated the way everyone cheered when the mother killed Christian Bale's character but retrospectively, I realize that, at least in that case, she trusted Justice first, and it proved her wrong. Here, Jackson did his own justice with racial injustices as a pre-crime alibi.
Even the climactic summation is all wrong, it invites people to imagine the crime on a white girl, not on their daughter, but a WHITE girl. Well, if that's the way to earn the jury's empathy, then even an acquittal is meaningless. And the film didn't even play fair with the plot to give us a proper verdict: so, the father is "innocent"? Of what? He killed them, didn't he? He pleaded insanity, so was he or not? If he had been given a short sentence of jail or a suspended one that would have been a realistic ending and a victory, but no, the Justice system admits that he was right to act on his own terms, out of insanity, grief, pain whatever you call it.
The more I dig in the plot, the less reasons to admire it, I see. It is really not a good script, and could easily have been one of the best trials movies, had it tried a little more, or maybe a little less.
First, could the bad guys be any badder? I know these things happen but talk about 'overkill', in one minute, you get all the racist redneck cliche's, the Confederate flag, the pick-up truck, the booze, and the two villains going all 'buahahaha' on the screen. The rape was shocking enough to provoke an immediate reaction; did it really need all that 'dressing'? And didn't we have enough with the two rapists so we also had to have a KKK booster shoot to tell us that there's no one of redeeming value in the 'victims' side, who could condemn the rape, while still mourning the human losses.
I know subtlety isn't Schumacher's strongest suit but he had the perfect set-up, a father murdering the men who raped his daughter was enough, and all the film needed was to build on this, not to add extra elements reminding how racism still prevails in the South, we got the idea. So, instead of dealing with the pain that could prevail in both sides, instead of having scenes in the courtroom reminding us that 'an eye for an eye' doesn't stand for justice, and make that the core of the debate, the film was just about racism. Writer Akiva Goldman was so blinded by his own 'personal' crusade that he didn't think the story could have been tackled from a more challenging and, say, neutral perspective, asking legitimate questions about 'vigilante' justice.
I read many comments saying "if I was the father, I would have blown their heads off or made them suffer first", but the father didn't kill them as soon as he got a chance, which could have been an 'immediate' reaction, he anticipated a verdict and executed them. We only assume he was right if we take for granted that these men wouldn't have had the right sentence, and this is a certitude the script desperately tries to deliver. But had a prosecutor delivered a similar speech as the climactic one, mentioning all the graphic and disgusting details about the little girl's rape, are we to assume that the jury would have acquitted these two men or given them a suspended sentence? If that's the case, then it's hopeless.
But I resisted and resented that idea. I refuse to believe that there would have been parents in the jury room who'd have felt any sympathy for the rapists. In fact, it's pretty much a MacGuffin, we're supposed to believe that's how the Law works in order to understand the father's action. Movies like "In Cold Blood", "Inherit the Wind" or "Judgment at Nuremeberg" raised thought- provoking questions. "A Time to Kill" provides the good question, but, as if it didn't trust our intelligence enough, it also gives the answer and the arguments, too. And instead of being a confrontation between two disturbing realities, a horrendous crime and a questionable act of vengeance, it becomes your routinely battle between good and evil, and the journey of the young lawyer Brigance, facing burning crosses and houses while his entourage is harassed and threatened.
We have to get through these cliché scenes where he contemplates failure, the moment where his wife (Ashley Judd) reproaches him to spend too much time on this case (boy, did I cringe on this one), where his secretary (Brenda Ficker) tells him he's gone too far, and the "case is lost" moment because the attorney unveiled the past of a key witness. Such a story deserved better than this stuff we've seen over and over again. Basically, apart from Jackson and McConaughey, there's no single three-dimensional character in the film, Sandra Bullock is the wannabe assistant who miraculously provides all the needed information (especially to the audience) and when she's the victim of the most brutal assault, what does she say when Brigance visits her in the hospital? "I had to do this, so you could call me Ellen", how cute!
The one character who could have added some nuance was the cop played by Chris Cooper, who lost his leg in the fusillade. "I would have done the same" he says, I could buy that, but did he have to add "he's a hero, turn him loose", would you call a hero someone who cut your leg off? But this is only a critic on the form; the writing undermines the message more than anything. I thought "Shaft" had a sort of pro-vigilante message and I hated the way everyone cheered when the mother killed Christian Bale's character but retrospectively, I realize that, at least in that case, she trusted Justice first, and it proved her wrong. Here, Jackson did his own justice with racial injustices as a pre-crime alibi.
Even the climactic summation is all wrong, it invites people to imagine the crime on a white girl, not on their daughter, but a WHITE girl. Well, if that's the way to earn the jury's empathy, then even an acquittal is meaningless. And the film didn't even play fair with the plot to give us a proper verdict: so, the father is "innocent"? Of what? He killed them, didn't he? He pleaded insanity, so was he or not? If he had been given a short sentence of jail or a suspended one that would have been a realistic ending and a victory, but no, the Justice system admits that he was right to act on his own terms, out of insanity, grief, pain whatever you call it.
The more I dig in the plot, the less reasons to admire it, I see. It is really not a good script, and could easily have been one of the best trials movies, had it tried a little more, or maybe a little less.