Stealth Entertainment
By Scott Lumley
July 17, 2008
And that's what really gets this ball rolling. The trial starts and right off the bat both Nick and Rankin start working the jury over with all the subtlety of Tara Reid at an open bar. Rankin starts applying pressure, intimidating and blackmailing. Nick starts applying his own brand of pressure from the inside, and things start to escalate from there. It's a little frightening to watch just how easily people start to fold and crack under some simple pressure and how easy some of the information is to obtain. Laws are broken, sure, but it sure doesn't look very difficult for any of us to get placed in the same boat.
The movie revolves around the excessively free gun laws that the US currently employs and there is a lot of rhetoric about guns being good or bad. The movie is less than subtle about what side of that argument it's on. Nick and Wendell are clearly good guys and underdogs in this regard while Fitch and his army of weasels...er...jury consultants use every trick in the book to bend people to their draconian, mustache-twirling will. Nick fires back at Fitch constantly and the movie revolves around these two as they struggle for control of the jury while Wendell can only stare helplessly from the sidelines.
Brisk pacing and well-written dialogue ensure that we barely have time to keep up with all the posturing, maneuvering, threatening and taunting. But by the end it's clear exactly what Nick's agenda really is, and while it was somewhat telegraphed, it did put a big smile on my face. If there is a fault here it is that I connected too well with some of the poor jurors that got caught in the middle of the fracas. You wonder what happened to some of these people and if they ever managed to get their lives straightened back around, and you feel a little cheated when nobody tells you what did come next for these people.
In the end, when the credits rolled, I was happy with Runaway Jury. There's a well designed plot, excellent dialogue, world-class actors and some less than subtle commentary. It's a satisfying film, and while you may wish for a little more story, you'll certainly be satisfied by this professional and well crafted story.
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