John Grisham’s 1989 novel A Time to Kill was rejected by major American publishers, ultimately getting a 5000-copy print run from Wynwood Press.
#A time to kill movie reviews movie
I know this movie was made over twenty years ago but the problem persists.Note: the last two paragraphs of this review spoil the ending of the film. The film only heightens the stereotyped, inaccurate view non-Southerners have towards a place they don’t understand (and most haven’t even visited) and it only hardens the resentment of Southerners about the way they’ve been portrayed by Hollywood. Is this the way to go about making a movie about them? No. Yes, there are racial issues in the South. It’s a complete misrepresentation of a people and culture, black and white. But it’s not just how they sound… none of these people feel like any of the people I’ve met in Mississippi, visiting throughout my childhood and making over five films there. Everyone sweats in every scene because clearly air conditioning hasn’t reached Canton, Mississippi in the 1980s/90s? Every accent from the non-Southern actors is wrong and some don’t even try (probably a wise move in retrospective). Everything is sensationalized and hardly believable, from many of the plot developments to the characterizations.īut the real issue with A Time to Kill, and the reason all involved should feel ashamed of themselves, is the cartoonish picture of the South. Joel Schumacher, not a subtle filmmaker, handles the narrative like a tabloid column. On a storytelling level, it’s an embellished disaster. But somehow they can’t save this embarrassment of a film. As mentioned, like Runaway Jury and The Firm it includes an impressive group of actors. I finally caught up with this John Grisham movie, the third and last in my viewing trilogy. However, only few of them were any good and A Time to Kill isn’t one of them.
Oh, it certainly was a different time for filmmaking, when legal thrillers lasted two and a half hours and the best ensemble casts were assembled for serious, socially-minded book adaptations. In the end, they should have stuck with the story in John Grisham’s novel because the change makes this otherwise entertaining movie look like the work of an anti-gun lobby. When the film was all about who was tricking who, it had me but as soon as it tried too hard to convince its audience that guns and gun manufacturers are evil, it lost me. That ensemble carries the ridiculous but enthralling plot and I found myself thoroughly engaged until the narrative dives deep into its political messaging in the last third. It boasts a great cast from sir Gene Hackman to Hoffman to a reliable John Cusack and Rachel Weisz protagonist duo to supporting parts by tons of recognizable faces including Nick Searcy, who I recently worked with on Terror on the Prairie. It stuck with me and I want to keep watching the filmmaker’s body of work to fully understand what that might mean and how it could even relate to my own movies.ĭisregarding the preachiness of this legal thriller, it’s an entertaining if implausible thriller. I recently read a comment by Paul Schrader, labeling Pollack’s style as “poetic realism”. That’s why Gene Hackman, terrific as always, doesn’t come off as a typical bad guy and his fate is perhaps the most emotional moment of the movie. It may not be realistic from a legal perspective, but he keeps it real by focusing on the characters and their relationships. With the help of a committed Tom Cruise, in one of his best early roles, Pollack crafts a tight suspense story that never strays into absurdity like some of the other Grisham movies. And therefore, it’s no surprise that he takes this film across the finish line. His Tootsie even feels like a superior, adult movie compared to the silly crap the studios have generated for decades.
Who else could command this cast? Who else could rein in this overlong sprawling legal thriller? Pollack could make a serious Hollywood picture like no other, a skill he demonstrated with Out of Africa, Jeremiah Johnson, The Electric Horseman, Three Days of the Condor, and even late efforts such as Random Hearts. So who is responsible for the success of this one, arguably the best Grisham film to date? But as movies in general and even other adaptations of the author’s work have shown, a great cast doesn’t always make a good picture.
This Grisham adaptation has one of the best casts ever assembled from Cruise to Hackman to Holbrook to Wilford Brimley to Gary Busey to Ed Harris to David Strathairn to the unforgettable Holly Hunter. This week focuses on three John Grisham adaptations.
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