Movie Review: Demolition Man (1993)

Genre: Science Fiction Action Comedy  

Director: Marco Brambilla  

Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes, Sandra Bullock, Nigel Hawthorne, Bob Gunton  

Running Time: 115 minutes  

Synopsis: In a crime-infested Los Angeles of 1996, police officer John Spartan (Sylvester Stallone) arrests deranged crime lord Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes), but with high collateral damage. Both are sentenced to years of cryogenic freezing with subliminal rehabilitation. Phoenix awakens in 2032, where Dr. Raymond Cocteau (Nigel Hawthorne) lords over a docile and crime-free society but with all pleasures illegal. Phoenix immediately unleashes chaos, forcing the police chief (Bob Gunton) to unfreeze Spartan, who teams up with police officer Lenina Huxley (Sandra Bullock). Bewildered by new societal rules, Spartan revives brute force methods to track down his nemesis.

What Works Well: This eminently quotable genre-mashing adventure has just as much fun deriding a cancel-happy culture as it does poking fun at itself with sturdy comic underpinnings. A society where the police force no longer knows how to fight crime - because there is no crime to fight - sounds utopic until the blandness of defangment surfaces in everything from outlawed cursing to the forgotten pleasures of physical contact. Into this sterility trundle Stallone's Spartan and Snipes' Phoenix as two dinosaur macho men on either side of the law, and they both quickly recognize a paradise worth wrecking. Sandra Bullock adds a sparkle as the bright-eyed police officer weirdly obsessed with the good old days of carnage.

What Does Not Work As Well: The plight of the (literal) underground resistance is short-changed, while the fragments of an abandoned sub-plot related to Spartan's daughter cause confusion. Several scenes double down on over-the-top action, Stallone and Snipes unlikely survivors of repeated unconstrained firepower and explosions. 

Key Quote:
Spartan: I just do my job and things get...
Lenina: ...get demolished.

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Movie Review: The Proposal (2009)

Genre: Romantic Comedy  

Director: Anne Fletcher  

Starring: Sandra Bullock, Ryan Reynolds, Craig T. Nelson, Mary Steenburgen, Betty White, Malin Akerman  

Running Time: 108 minutes  

Synopsis: Margaret (Sandra Bullock) is a high-powered no-nonsense executive at a New York publishing house. Andrew (Ryan Reynolds) is her hard-working assistant with ambitions to become an editor. When Margaret realizes she may be deported back to Canada for a work visa infraction, she pressures Andrew into a marriage agreement. They travel to Alaska to meet his family, including his parents (Mary Steenburgen and Craig T. Nelson) and grandma (Betty White), but Margaret finds more than she bargained for.

What Works Well: The first introductory act sparkles with energy and humour. Sandra Bullock thrives as a highly-strung and cold-as-ice leader, and the office environment around her is coloured-in for maximum laughs. Ryan Reynolds is at his quietly sardonic best managing his boss, and the interplay between them is razor sharp. Director Anne Fletcher finds a peak when Margaret drops the marriage idea on Andrew, his priceless reactions matching her frazzled audacity.

What Does Not Work As Well: The rest of the film is set in Alaska, and loses the early zest. Some joys can be found in Margaret's fish-out-of-water experiences, and an exceptionally strong supporting cast brings to life Andrew's family and friends (with Betty White a treasure, if slightly overplayed), but predictable beats start to dominate and the zing is lost.

Conclusion: Thrives in the city, idles in the country.

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Movie Review: Murder By Numbers (2002)

Genre: Crime Drama

Director: Barbet Schroeder

Starring: Sandra Bullock, Ryan Gosling, Ben Chaplin, Michael Pitt

Running Time: 120 minutes

Synopsis: Bored and intelligent high school classmates Richard (Ryan Gosling) and Justin (Michael Pitt) commit what they believe is the perfect murder as a philosophical expression of freedom. Detective-with-a-troubled-past Cassie Mayweather (Sandra Bullock) and her new partner Detective Sam Kennedy (Ben Chaplin) investigate, and the clues pre-arranged by Richard and Justin lead to the high school's drug-dealing janitor Ray (Chris Penn). But Cassie does not believe Ray fits the murderer's profile, and doggedly continues the investigation.

What Works Well: Inspired by the Leopold and Loeb case that was previously adapted into Rope (1948) and Compulsion (1959), Murder By Numbers finds the drama's strengths in the complex relationship between Richard (rich and arrogant) and Justin (intellectual and brooding). Ryan Gosling radiates quiet danger, while Michael Pitt's performance is more understated but no less impactful. The murderers' dependency undercurrents are disrupted by liaisons with classmate Lisa (Agnes Bruckner), and Tony Gayton's script adds a further psychological dimension by providing Cassie with a traumatic backstory. Sandra Bullock enjoys a licence to be knowingly cold, manipulative, and just as calculating as her shrewd foes.

What Does Not Work As Well: Ben Chaplin is not provided with much to work with as Sam Kennedy, neither as a co-worker nor as a romantic partner. The final plot twist is unnecessary.

Conclusion: Dangerously edgy characters transcend traditional police procedural beats.



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Movie Review: Bird Box (2018)

Genre: Post-Apocalyptic Survival Thriller

Director: Susanne Bier

Starring: Sandra Bullock, Trevante Rhodes, John Malkovich

Running Time: 124 minutes

Synopsis: Malorie (Sandra Bullock) bundles two blindfolded kids into a boat and sets off on a river journey seeking a survivor settlement. Flashbacks to five years prior reveal a pregnant but resentful Malorie being cheered-up by her sister Jessica (Sarah Paulson) before a mysterious menace suddenly devastates humanity: anyone who looks at it immediately commits suicide. With the world disintegrating Malorie seeks refuge in a house with army veteran Tom (Trevante Rhodes), crusty Douglas (John Malkovich), and supermarket cashier Charlie, among others. Blindfolds becomes essential for any outdoor excursions, but with supplies running low and the evil entity recruiting allies, staying alive is increasingly difficult.

What Works Well: Fear, uncertainty, and courage mix well in a quality study of normal people caught in the horror of apocalyptic events, creating a good companion piece to A Quiet Place. The threat of self-inflicted death manifests in various forms, the unseen malevolent enemy evolving, the lack of clear explanation adding to the tension and allowing space for discussions about drivers of physical and emotional societal self-destruction. The parallel story lines featuring Malorie's river journey and flashbacks to the start of the crisis provide variety and relief. 

What Does Not Work As Well: The running time is prolonged and too accommodating of samey character dynamics, while the sappy ending is a let-down amidst the global carnage.

Conclusion: Well worth removing the blindfolds to view the unseen.



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Movie Review: The Unforgivable (2021)

A drama about the search for redemption, The Unforgivable is a human-centred and character-rich story about past mistakes casting a dark shadow on the present.

After serving 20 years for murdering a cop, Ruth Slater (Sandra Bullock) is released from prison. Parole officer Vincent Cross (Rob Morgan) sets her up at a dingy halfway house in Seattle's Chinatown and finds her a job at a fisheries plant, where she meets the amiable Blake (Jon Bernthal). Ruth is determined to find her younger sister Katherine (Aisling Franciosi), who was five years old when the murder happened. Katherine was subsequently adopted and raised by Rachel and Michael Malcolm, who also have a younger daughter Emily (Emma Nelson).

Ruth visits the farmhouse where the cop shooting happened and meets current occupants John and Liz Ingram (Vincent D'Onofrio and Viola Davis). John is a lawyer and offers to help Ruth track down Katherine. Meanwhile, brothers Keith and Steve Whalen are the grown sons of the slain police officer. Keith is furious Ruth is now free and plots a revenge, but Steve has a young family to think about. With emotions running high, the lives of Ruth, the Malcolms, the Ingrams, and the Whalen brothers are inexorably drawn together.

An adaptation of a British miniseries, The Unforgivable is a superbly constructed and unpredictable drama. The screenplay (by Peter Craig, Hillary Seitz, and Courtenay Miles) embraces a diverse set of well-drawn characters propelled by conflicting motivations, and launches them on different trajectories but all headed towards inevitable collisions. Breezy surprises abound: on more than one occasion, initially less prominent characters emerge as key plot participants, upturning expectations.

Narrative strength is derived from a range of emotions all tied to the same incident. Ruth's quest for reunification with her sister only gains resonance as more is revealed about their past. The sons of the slain police officer have every right to feel aggrieved the murderer is free in their community. The Malcolms raised Katherine as their daughter, but also suspect her lingering mental struggles are related to her childhood. Katherine's younger sister Emily starts at the margins but will not stay there, while the Ingrams learn they are living in a house with a past, and are now drawn into a tragedy's next chapter.

Hans Zimmer contributes a soulfully haunting soundtrack to enhance both the emotional twists and the host aesthetics. Mostly filmed in the Vancouver area standing-in for Seattle, the dreary and damp northwest landscape captures Ruth's dour mood. Sandra Bullock is suitably deglamorized and stays faithful to a character hardened by 20 years in prison, but also does not need to stretch much beyond a traditional pain-behind-the-eyes stance.

In an assured feature film debut, director Nora Fingscheidt introduces the characters with both depth and brevity. She demonstrates confidence with brief flashbacks to the pivotal shooting incident and its immediate aftermath while rotating multiple perspectives in the present. Some characters are therefore paused for relatively long periods, but step forward to make an impact on cue.

The complex and ultimately emotionally exhausting drama wraps up in under two hours. The Unforgivable is impressively expansive in scope, marvellously efficient in execution.

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Movie Review: The Net (1995)

A techno thriller, The Net is filled with bright ideas about the dangers of the online world, but mishandles all of them.

In a prologue, the US Undersecretary of Defense commits suicide after receiving bad personal news.

In Venice, California, Angela Bennett (Sandra Bullock) is a computer systems analyst and an expert in tracking and eliminating software viruses. Employed by Cathedral Software, she is a loner who works from home, communicating with co-worker Dale online and through courier messages. Her mother (Diane Baker) is institutionalized with dementia.

Dale alerts Angela to a new malicious software program providing unauthorized access to important networks, just before he dies in a mysterious small plane crash. While on vacation in Mexico, Angela meets computer programmer Jack Devlin (Jeremy Northam). A whirlwind romance ends in violence with Angela on the run and her identity stolen. She uncovers a massive conspiracy by a software tycoon, and turns to former lover Dr. Alan Champion (Dennis Miller) for help.

Co-writers John Brancato and Michael Ferris deserve credit for conceiving a prescient thriller centred on a power-hungry corporation exploiting growing dependence on the Internet to gain enormous influence. Add in a work-from-home angle,  the destructive reach of malware, and a game Sandra Bullock, and The Net has plenty to go on.

Unfortunately, the good potential is mostly wasted. Both the technology and the thriller elements are developed in the worst possible cliche-filled and logic-challenged directions, fatally undermining enjoyment. The woman-in-danger aspects are stock and prod Angela towards heroic physical feats inconsistent with her character. She is also subjected to a complex but inexplicable identity theft crisis when it appears much easier to just kill her, as the antagonists here demonstrate no hesitation in offing their opponents. 

As for the technology, The Net fades rapidly towards a ridiculous resolution, exemplified by an omniscient software capable of controlling all things but somehow left susceptible to a single keystroke. A MacGuffin in the form of a damaged computer disk becomes less relevant with every passing scene.

Some enjoyment can be found in the corners, mainly courtesy of a feisty Sandra Bullock performance demonstrating spunky resilience. Director Irwin Winkler also designs a couple of tense race-against-the-clock scenes, including Angela triggering the fire alarm to gain network access at her employer's workplace. But despite a decent boot-up, The Net stutters on buggy plotting.



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Movie Review: Practical Magic (1998)

A romantic comedy with fantasy elements, Practical Magic wastes a good cast on frivolous content.

The Owens women come from a long line of witches, and one of their ancestors unleashed a curse dooming all her descendants to calamitous love lives. Sure enough, sisters Sally and Gillian Owens (Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman) tragically lost their parents at a young age and were raised by aunts Frances and Bridget (Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest).

Sally tries to counter the curse by leaving witchcraft behind, settling down and starting a family, while Gillian heads off in search of fun and casual relationships. Sally learns the hard way she cannot escape the curse and is soon dealing with heartache, while Gillian falls in with no-good boyfriend Jimmy Angelov (Goran Visnjic). The sisters soon find themselves in a heap of trouble, and detective Gary Hallet (Aidan Quinn) comes snooping.

An adaptation of the book by Alice Hoffman, Practical Magic throws a tepid romance, childish magic tricks and rarely funny humour into a bland mix. Director Griffin Dunne has a magnificent cast at his disposal, Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock supported not only by Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest but also Margo Martindale, a young Evan Rachel Wood and Chloe Webb. 

Some fun is achieved with the concept of harmless modern-day witches with a limited repertoire of tricks (blowing candles on and self-stirring tea cups are about the extent of it) trying to fit into a small town society, and the actresses try their best to salvage a base level of watchability, but they are ultimately stymied by a lame script devoid of wit and sparkle.

The plot meanders aimlessly, waving unconvincingly at themes of sisterhood, unwarranted ostracism, and the trade-off between domesticity and fun. Most of the wispy threads are summarily abandoned in favour of dabbling in crime, attempted screwball comedy, and a late-in-arriving romance badly in need of thawing. A nauseating let's-all-be-happy climax, complete with smoky special effects, can't come - and go - soon enough. 

Despite the preponderance of acting talent, Practical Magic can only conjure up feeble spells and disappears in a puff of irrelevance.



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Movie Review: Speed (1994)

A supercharged thrill ride, Speed rides a far-fetched plot at manic velocity. 

In Los Angeles, SWAT team members and best buddies Jack Traven and Harry Temple (Keanu Reeves and Jeff Daniels) foil the elevator hostages-and-bombing extortion plot of madman Howard Payne (Dennis Hopper). Believed to be dead, Howard remerges and quickly hatches his next atrocity, rigging a transit bus to explode if it slows below 50 mph and demanding a $3.6 million ransom.

Jack makes it onto the bus while it's in motion, and when the driver is accidentally shot passenger Annie Porter (Sandra Bullock) jumps behind the wheel. Harry tries to uncover the bomber's identity and location while Jack has to keep Annie driving above the threshold speed while figuring out a way to rescue the passengers and avoid an explosion.

A ridiculously simple "Die Hard on wheels" premise delivers exactly what it promises: a thrill every five minutes, acts of selfless heroism, a hissing villain, stunts galore, and a romance blossoming behind the steering wheel. Of course none of it makes the least bit of sense and the laws of physics are kicked off the bus early, but the sense of wild fun is infectious.

Jan de Bont steps up from cinematography duties and easily slips into the director's chair, infusing the film with vivid colours and bursting energy. Whenever faced with a choice between restraint and wild abandon, the quick answer in Graham Yost's script is more is better. This does lead to a protracted second climax on a subway rail car, unfortunately abandoning the bus focus in a case of not knowing when enough is enough.

A speeding bus crashing into everything from a stroller (no babies were hurt in the making of this movie) to an airplane and jumping over freeway gaps is no place for in-depth character exposition, and so Keanu Reeves, Dennis Hopper and Sandra Bullock default to shorthand definitions. Reeves gives Jack Traven an earnest boy scout gloss, Bullock's Annie starts and ends at gum-chewing feistiness, and Hopper's bomb expert is mad at a world he believes shortchanged his career. All three are good enough to complement the non-stop mayhem.

Speed is a jolt of undemanding visceral entertainment, as unpretentious in its intentions as the humble transit bus.

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Movie Review: Hope Floats (1998)

A drama about the consequences of a shattered marriage and going back home, Hope Floats is a dreary descent into doldrums.

In New York City, Birdee (Sandra Bullock) is embarrassed on a trashy daytime television talk show when her supposed best friend Connie (an uncredited Rosanna Arquette) reveals she is having an affair with Birdee's husband Bill (Michael Paré). Birdee packs up her young daughter Bernice (Mae Whitman) and heads back to her tiny hometown of Smithville, Texas, to live with her mother Ramona (Gena Rowlands).

In her high school days Birdee was the local beauty queen. Now after a period of sulking she gets reacquainted with a town that has barely changed, and faces some backlash for her prior haughtiness. She meets wood craftsman Justin Matisse (Harry Connick Jr.) who has had a crush on her since school days, and he initiates a romantic pursuit. Meanwhile young Bernice encounters school bullying issues and hopes her father Bill will come back.

No amount of small town charm, flashes of humour and movie star glamour can save Hope Floats. In one of his few directing excursions, Forest Whitaker delivers a boring and overlong story of a woman coming to terms with the end of her marriage. The film runs out of things to say about 30 minutes in, and once handsome and available Harry Connick Jr. shows up, the ending is predetermined but the tortured Steven Rogers script has to trudge through plenty of nothingness to get there.

And so Whitaker gets busy with a mundane and ultimately pointless subplot about Bernice tangling with the school bully. Birdee plays hard-to-get with Justin to run down the clock when she is not taking turns shouting then hugging with Ramona and Bernice. Birdee's father, confined to a seniors' home and suffering from Alzheimer's disease, is another narrative dead-end.

Sandra Bullock tries hard to save the movie but to no avail, although Whitaker takes time to occasionally capture his star with the light hitting her perfectly ruffled hair just-so for the full glamour effect. Actually filmed in Smithville, the local charm quotient is lower than it should be.

Hope Floats is mopey bloat.

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Movie Review: Ocean's Eight (2018)

A heist thriller, Ocean's Eight features an all-women gang plotting a daring diamond heist at the dressy gala event of the year. The female perspective is empowering, but the plot and characters are middling.

Debbie Ocean (Sandra Bullock), sister of the infamous Danny, is released from prison after serving more than five years for theft and fraud. She sets about assembling a team of women for her next big job. Lou (Cate Blanchett) is Debbie's frequent partner-in-crime, Tammy (Sarah Paulson) is a fence hiding behind a suburban family facade, Nine Ball (Rihanna) is a top-notch hacker, Constance (Awkwafina) is a light-fingered thief, and Amita (Mindy Kaling) is a jewelry maker.

Their target is the New York Metropolitan Museum of Arts annual fundraising gala. The event's star attraction is actress Daphne Kluger (Anne Hathaway), and Debbie recruits fashion designer Rose Weil (Helena Bonham Carter) to ensure Daphne wears a precious Cartier necklace worth $150m for the evening. The plot to steal the necklace involves spiked soup, security camera blind spots and a special role for Debbie's former partner, smarmy art dealer Claude Becker (Richard Armitage).

While there is merit in re-imagining familiar stories with women in lead roles, the inherent added value can be limited. Ocean's Eight is slick, vivid and sparkly, but other than featuring women as instigators, barely adds anything new to the heist genre. Indeed, the details of the theft are less clever than most. A security camera nudged into a blindspot is not the most thrilling innovation, and becomes essentially ridiculous when the full extent of the plan is later revealed.

The film is sprinkled with wit and some humour, but also lacks character depth and any sense of genuine surprise. Other than Debbie and her spectral bond with Danny (presumed dead, but she has her suspicions) and grizzled friendship with Lou, the other characters threaten to be interesting but are singularly defined by their expertise and receive precious little opportunity to evolve.

As for attempts at unexpected delights, Ocean's Eight introduces a late and unnecessary twist that lands flat and only serves to underline the script's lack of confidence in its own core narrative.

Director and co-writer Gary Ross twiddles the style knobs and recognizes the value of a star-studded cast willing to have some fun, and the film rides their energy. Bullock (determined), Blanchett (circumspect) and an especially ditzy Hathaway generate their own momentum, almost independent of the plot details.

Helena Bonham Carter is unfortunately saddled with a caricature representation of an eccentric fashion designer, while Sarah Paulson's Tammy is bland enough to be instantly forgettable. Rihanna, Awkwafina and Mindy Kaling add diversity but are strictly confined to stereotypes of hacker, thief and jewel maker respectively.

On the positive side, the final act features an intervention by insurance investigator John Frazier (James Corden), an acid-tongued Brit capable of seeing through every conceivable lie. His presence adds a jolt of cheeky electricity as he skewers everyone to determine the fate of the precious necklace. He's a man navigating a maze carefully constructed by a group of sharp women, a welcome reversal of fortune even if the content is familiar for any gender.

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Movie Review: Premonition (2007)

A supernatural psychological drama, Premonition offers an intriguing premise but is handicapped by sloppy attempts at sappiness.

The marriage of Linda and Jim Hanson (Sandra Bullock and Julian McMahon) has hit the doldrums. The passion has seeped out despite a seemingly idyllic life, two young daughters and a large house in the suburbs. Things get much worse when Linda learns that Jim has died in a fiery car crash on the highway while on a business trip. Linda's mother Joanne (Kate Nelligan) and friend Annie (Nia Long) arrive to offer comfort.

But the next day Linda wakes up and Jim is still alive. Dumbfounded, she starts to question her sanity. Other scary incidents over the coming days include one of her daughters smashing through a glass door, and a gory encounter with a dead crow. Not knowing what each new day may bring and confused over the health of her marriage and the sequence of events in her life, Linda reaches out to psychologist Dr. Norman Roth (Peter Stormare), but he may be more of a hindrance than a help.

Directed by Mennan Yapo and written by Bill Kelly, Premonition plays with the idea of a mind under stress mimicking a marriage spiralling in all the wrong directions. The film offers a puzzle built on jumbled time, and once the framework is set, all sorts of possibilities emerge. Premonition in this case is a vivid experience which may have either already happened or could still be prevented, and with the failing dynamic between Linda and Jim, she has interesting choices to make.

The theme of preordained destiny or a future potentially shaped by human decisions bubbles to the surface, and Premonition deserves credit for presenting an eternal debate through a fresh lens. The final third of the film veers towards some maudlin moments, and Linda's last-ditch attempts to save her marriage are less than convincing.

Brief but effective horror moments punctuate the film and add to the sense of unease. The encounters with the glass sliding door and the dead crow provide opportunities for gory and sharp shocks, signposts that all is clearly not well in Linda's week.

Sandra Bullock capably carries the weight of the film, mixing incredulity with determination while handling the time shifts with increasing confidence. The rest of the cast members are given relatively little to do, with Julian McMahon operating at a particularly bland television movie level.

Premonition offers decent quality and thought-provoking entertainment without necessarily reinventing the wheels of time.

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Movie Review: Miss Congeniality (2000)

An engaging comedy about an undercover investigation at a beauty pageant, Miss Congeniality offers a reasonably fresh premise and a committed Sandra Bullock performance.

A tough tomboy as a child, Gracie Hart (Bullock) is now a dedicated FBI agent with no life outside her career and no social skills. After disobeying orders and botching a bust of Russian gangsters, Gracie gets into trouble with her supervisor Harry McDonald (Ernie Hudson). Meanwhile her colleague Agent Eric Matthews (Benjamin Bratt) is assigned to head a task force trying to prevent a domestic terrorist known only as The Citizen from carrying out a new attack.

Intelligence points to an upcoming Miss United States pageant in San Antonio as the likely target of the Citizen's next attack. Eric recruits Gracie to go undercover as Miss New Jersey to try and disrupt the plot and unmask the perpetrator. Pageant director Kathy Morningside (Candice Bergen) and her show host Stan Fields (William Shatner) are none-too-pleased that the plain-looking Gracie is being forced upon their competition. Kathy appoints Victor Melling (Michael Caine), a consultant to pageant aspirants, to scrub Gracie into some sort of competitive shape. Gracie struggles to adopt a new glamorous persona while trying to piece together clues to uncover and stop the threat.

Directed by Donald Petrie and produced by Bullock, Miss Congeniality is a compact comedy that mostly works thanks to better-than-usual array of characters and some wry social commentary. The stream of laughs is steady, and a lot of the humour is self-deprecatingly delivered at the expense of Bullock's fish-out-of-water character. And with the likes of Caine, Bergen, and Shatner in key supporting roles, there is plenty of talent to carry the weight of the film.

The Pygmalion-like relationship between mentor Victor Melling and pupil Gracie Hart allows the film to explore a substantive side-quest with many laugh opportunities. Gracie never cared to be anything other than a cop, and Victor faces the challenge of his life unearthing an alluring woman out of the red-meat-eating, beer-swilling, gun-toting FBI agent.

The film also nudges Gracie towards better understanding a world that she never cared for, and through friendships she develops with the other contestants, she starts to gain a modicum of appreciation if not respect for women who care about their appearance and their personality, and are not just single-mindedly focused on careers.

The film includes shallow romance elements, with Eric gradually finding the courage to express some feelings towards Gracie, and he is helped along by her stunning physical evolution from grungy one-of-the-guys to pageant beauty.

Miss Congeniality may not be a stellar performer but she does earn a solid place on the podium.

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Movie Review: A Time To Kill (1996)

An overstuffed legal drama, A Time To Kill offers an all-star cast and plenty of incident, but quickly sprawls into too many crimes and loses touch with reality.

In rural Mississippi, two redneck white trash supremacists brutally rape Tonya, a ten year old black girl. She survives and identifies the attackers, who are summarily arrested. Before their trial can start, Tonya's dad Carl Lee (Samuel L. Jackson) approaches his friend and lawyer Jake Brigance (Matthew McConaughey) and strongly hints that he will be seeking vigilante justice and would want Jake to subsequently defend him. Sure enough, Carl Lee goes ahead and guns down the two perpetrators and seriously wounds police officer Dwayne Looney (Chris Cooper) in the process.

The case generates a media circus, with District Attorney Rufus Buckley (Kevin Spacey) seeking the death penalty. Brigance reconnects with his retired mentor Lucien Wilbanks (Donald Sutherland) and prepares a defence based on temporary insanity. Young and idealistic law student Ellen Roark (Sandra Bullock) offers her help to the defence team. Meanwhile, the black community rallies behind Carl Lee, while Freddie Lee Cobb (Kiefer Sutherland), a brother of one of the victims, reaches out to the Ku Klux Klan. They start a campaign of intimidation against Brigance, placing his wife Carla (Ashley Judd) and young daughter in harm's way. With the small town rocking with violence and protests, Jake has to find a way to defend a distraught black father in front of an all-white jury.

Another John Grisham adaptation and again directed by Joel Schumacher, A Time To Kill is a glossy production, filled with familiar faces in every role, and with enough going on to maintain interest over 150 minutes. The performances are solid within the courtroom and on the streets, and Schumacher creates a sweat-drenched Southern aesthetic where different rules apply, and deep racial divides are hidden just below the surface. The search for justice in a straightforward vigilante violence case made much more complicated by racial overtones presents a juicy social dilemma.

But the film suffers from several issues, not the least of which is the multiplicity of crimes that cascade from the original murders but seem to come and go with no consequence. In the course of the film a cross is burned on the front lawn of the Brigance house, an old man is badly beaten, a house is burned down, a woman is kidnapped and left to die tied to a tree, and a national guardsman is shot in the neck, in broad daylight, with a high powered sniper rifle. Not one of these crimes receives any follow-up attention or investigation, and the perpetrators remain free to roam the streets.

A Time To Kill also suffers from an Akiva Goldsman script that can only be called lazy. In an attempt to perhaps pack in too much of the book's content into the film, many sub-plots are casually introduced and barely developed, and characters flounder on the rocks of poor advancement. There are a couple of scenes showing the jury grappling with the case over a meal; they then disappear from view and don't even get the privilege of being seen to deliver the verdict. An entire sub-plot related to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People insisting on replacing Brigance with a high profile hired gun consumes valuable screen time and adds very little. An informant within the Klan plays a key role; his seemingly compelling story is dangled tantalizingly and then abandoned. And the characters of Ellen Roark, Lucien Wilbanks and Jake's friend and rival Harry (Oliver Platt) vie for screen time and barely get one meaningful scene each.

But the presence of McConaughey, Jackson and Spacey ensures that the film is never less than watchable, as they whack away at the thicket of an overgrown plot and towards a final courtroom confrontation. A Time To Kill is decent, but would have greatly benefited from an old fashioned pruning.

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The Movies Of Sandra Bullock

All movies starring Sandra Bullock and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Demolition Man (1993)

Speed (1994)

The Net (1995)

A Time To Kill (1996)

Hope Floats (1998)

Practical Magic (1998)

Miss Congeniality (2000)

Murder By Numbers (2002)

Two Weeks Notice (2002)

Crash (2004)

The Lake House (2006)

Premonition (2007)

The Proposal (2009)

The Blind Side (2009)

Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close (2011)

Gravity (2013)

Ocean's Eight (2018)

Bird Box (2018)

The Unforgivable (2021)

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The Movie Star Index is here.