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Runaway
Jury
 Adapted from the John
Grisham novel of the same name (which is a pretty good read incidentally)
Runaway Jury casts everyman John
Cusack and his girlfriend Marlee against big time gun company
money and the thugs it can buy. Gene
Hackman plays the lead thug and jury consultant with Dustin
Hoffman providing the prosecuting attorney. Cusack, using the
name Nicholas Easter, infiltrates the jury pool and begins operating
on the inside of the gun violence trial while Rachel
Weisz (caution: link may contain nudity) assists
him on the outside. Filmed in the heart of New Orleans, this movie
is a joy to look at with the old court rooms and French Quarter
charm. All the fake accents are a bit off putting (Weisz trying to
sound American and Hoffman trying to sound southern for example which
by the way is additionally disconcerting because he sounds exactly
like his Dorothy Michaels character from Tootsie)
but over all it comes off as a pretty good couple hours of
entertainment. Grisham’s story idea is a good one and the screenwriters
do a decent job of translating it to the screen even though it was
big tobacco in the book instead of big guns. It is interesting to
see the technology applied to jury selection whether it is an accurate
depiction of the real world or not and what is at stake if one jury in one
town would make a damaging ruling against corporate America. Having
read the book first, obviously, detracted from the experience and
some of the films mechanisms for tying up the loose ends are
implausible but it it still not a bad way to spend an evening.
Rating: 
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