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Res Ipsa Loquitur?

By Mac VerStandig

A few years back, with only seconds left in the closing arguments of a debate tournament, a young man, Eli Kaplan, looked up from his notes, put down his pen and stared at the judge, asserting his opposition.

“You see, their argument is sort of like a John Grisham novel: Far-fetched, poorly crafted, but very entertaining.” And so goes “Runaway Jury,” the latest Grisham adaptation.

Two years after a failed day trader goes Rambo on his former office, the widow of a victim files a wrongful death lawsuit against a gun manufacturer, setting the stage for a high-stakes civil showdown.

On one side is Wendell Rohr (Dustin Hoffman, “Kramer vs. Kramer”), a plaintiff’s attorney whose belief in justice gives him heart but not innocence. When a young jury consultant, Lawrence Green (Jeremy Piven, “Old School”), approaches Rohr and professes to “believe in a world without guns,” the lawyer retorts, “That’s very sweet but a little naíve.”

On the other side is Durwood Cable (Bruce Davison, “X-Men”), a gritty defense attorney with an even grittier client. He concurs with jury consultant (and apparent puppet master) Ranklin Fitch (Gene Hackmen, “The Firm”) that, “Trials are too important to be left up to the juries.”

Indeed, “Runaway Jury” is a legal film dependent upon the notion that a ripe jury can undo rotten testimony.

Enter Nicholas Easter (John Cusack, “High Fidelity”), a mysterious conman who wiggles his way into the jury box and uses a bizarre twist of charisma and deception to win the minds of a panel that Fitch has spent millions of dollars trying to buy (Green and Rohr aren’t so well funded). Easter proves as cold-blooded as mythology’s most sinister lawyer, discretely communicating to the plaintiff and defense that he has the ability to sway the verdict either way and will deliver it to the side which ponies up $10 million first.

This notion of “justice for sale” leads to a number of shady meetings and violent chases through New Orleans, where the film is set. In these scenes, director Gary Fleder (“Kiss the Girls”) does an extraordinary job of taking advantage of the southern city’s shadowy, aged mysticism, as the bayou really becomes one of the movie’s most important characters. With the same cold, damp atmosphere as “Midnight in the Garden of Good an Evil,” another Cusack picture, “Runaway Jury” manages to play with the audience’s nerves just enough to ensure that viewers are sufficiently drawn into the film.

The movie’s real tension, however, comes from its cast. Hoffman, who this critic firmly believes to be the finest actor of the past fifty years, reprises his underrated role in “Sleepers,” as the frail attorney who prominently wears his heart on his sleeve so as to distract his enemies from noticing his true agenda. The Academy Award winning actor also fully exploits his sharpest dialogue since David Mamet’s “American Buffalo,” injecting every line with stinging passion.

Hoffman, however, shares the chilliest repartee of “Runaway Jury” with the other decorated Hollywood veteran, Hackman. The film’s finest scene pits the two in a locked bathroom, screaming and pounding over questions of morality and justice, with Hoffman’s Rohr being sympathetically idealistic and Hackman’s Fitch unbelievably sadistic.

Therein also lies the film’s fatal flaw. Much of the plot’s tension is reliant upon the viewer loathing Fitch and that for which he stands, and although craftsmen in liberal Hollywood probably have little trouble cringing at the sight of anyone associated with a gun company, much of America sees the matter through a conservative lens that simply doesn’t equate those who produce firearms to murderers. “Runaway Jury” would be better served keeping with the premise of the Grisham novel and pitting the “little man” against the tobacco industry, a tension that proved itself viable in “The Insider.”

The plot is also, of course, devastatingly far-fetched. The sort of jury tampering that the film displays can only take place in the minds of the most paranoid conspiracy theorists and is entirely dependent upon flaws in the judicial system that simply don’t exist.

Then again, the “far-fetched, poorly crafted but very entertaining” analogy convinced judges of flaws in the opposition’s argument that didn’t exist. In fact, Mr. Kaplan won round after round until one day he stumbled across a judge who, like true justice, wasn’t blind.

Indeed, “Runaway Jury” is best viewed without peaking.

Grade: B