Runaway Jury

Bomb Rating: 

Just what are the odds in accomplishing such a thing? I'd say they're just slightly worse than Michael Moore and Ann Coulter conceiving a love child.

Hypothetically, let's just say that you have some particular interest in seeing the verdict of a high-profile case turn out in a specific way, so you move from city to city, attempting to get on the jury for THAT SPECIFIC CASE, so that you can then manipulate the jury into voting your way.

Just what are the odds in accomplishing such a thing? I'd say they're just slightly worse than Michael Moore and Ann Coulter conceiving a love child. Not only do Nicholas Easter (John Cusack) and his girlfriend, Marlee (Rachel Weisz), do just this, but Easter actually finds himself on a jury in a case where Wendell Rohr (Dustin Hoffman) is the prosecutor claiming that a gun manufacturer is responsible for the death of his client's husband in a shooting. Blah, blah, blah. Because this movie is based on a Grisham™ novel, it would be overkill to outline the usual elements that have been vomited into a blender and served up yet again to the viewing public.

If the cynicism weren't already bleeding out of this film like a knife in stuck pig, the defense has hired Rankin Fitch (Gene Hackman) and his scuzzy firm to buy off the jury and manipulate them in any way possible to make sure the outcome turns out in the gun manufacturer's favor.

Frankly, I thought it was the Right who got kept up at night dreaming of new paranoid delusions with which to create policy, but this time it's the Left, with visions of a legal system with about as much integrity as the TSA.