A Time to Kill (1996) (R)

A Time to Kill (1996) (R)
Directed by Joel Schumacher
Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Samuel L. Jackson, Kevin Spacey, Sandra Bullock

Daughter Says:

A Time to Kill is about a trial during the KKK time. Matthew McConaughey stars as a local lawyer who doesn't usually handle big time cases. So when two men rape Carl Lee Hailey's (Samuel L. Jackson) daughter, McConaughey is asked to perform his duty. McConaughey just couldn't refuse since he owed Jackson a favor. During the trial he has two fellows on his side. One is a very intelligent and witty girl named Ellen Roark (Sandra Bullock) and the other is a not so witty but law smart Harry Rex Vonner (Oliver Platt). Both help McConaughey through this impossible case.

I really liked how the story line went. I was moved during the whole thing. McConaughey did a brilliant job on making me connect with him and his associates. But I can’t give McConaughey all the credit. I also want to give praise to Kiefer Sutherland for doing such a good job at being such an evil man. He really did creep me out. Everyone did amazing on performing their parts. I really appreciated the speech at the end of this movie. I could imagine everything McConaughey said and it shocked me how well McConaughey said it. The whole thing is just a tear jerking moment.

Now to the downfall. I love romantic stories, but sometimes I come across pointless ones. Example would be Witness. There really was no point and the story really would be fine without it. The same goes for this movie. The intimacy between McConaughey and Bullock was pointless. I really didn’t need that there for me to care about anyone. In fact it didn’t help the story at all. The love relationship between those two had nothing to do with Jackson’s case. It was not helping anything or hurting anything. Well it would have hurt McConaughey’s relationship with his wife but other than that it did nothing.

I do recommend this movie for anyone who wants to enjoy a good courtroom drama, but I won’t say it’s a classic or one of a kind. It could have been done just slightly different. Other than that one thing it was overall a good movie.

Rating for A Time to Kill: ***.

Daddy Says:

A co-worker of mine is a native of Mississippi. He's always hated this movie for it's portrayal of his beloved home state. Not because of it's racist portrait of many of Mississippi's fine citizens, mind you. He hates how the film makes it seem like nobody has air conditioning in the entire state, and don't seem to mind sitting around in a pool of their own sweat.

Me, I don't mind that so much. I do however wish that the drama were a little more tightly scripted. We spend a great portion of the film worrying over what supposedly the entire case will swing around: the testimony of both sides' psychiatric evaluations as to the mental state of Carl Lee when he killed the two lovable chaps who raped and tortured his 10-year-old daughter. And then Matthew McConaughey's lawyer makes the rookie mistake of putting his client on the stand, where Kevin Spacey's defense lawyer gets him to admit that he's glad he killed them. Any lawyer I know would never put his client on the stand without preparing him for what the prosecutor was likely to throw at them.

Of course, the closing argument is really all that is needed to win the trial (and it is a very, very good closing argument; still works even today). So I didn't really need to sit through the 2 hours and 15 minutes that came before that point, which is really my biggest complaint about the film. This movie could have been trimmed by a good 30-45 minutes and been a lot better.

There's some half-hearted talk about the pros and cons of the death penalty, and some more talk about racism, but the script doesn't want to seem to deal with these issues head on, preferring to move things forward to where everyone wants them to go. Now, close your eyes. I want you to imagine a really good closing argument here.

Rating for A Time to Kill: ***1/2.