Review - Runaway Jury

As with all genres, it takes a certain special something to master the art of suspense. Suspense is more than simply drawing out a plot line and slowly revealing facts; it requires something more, namely, an emotional attachment from the audience. The masters of suspense know how to create a scene as emotionally taught as a tightrope, and as dangerous for the characters as though they were walking that very rope. But for a suspense film to be truly effective, it must also be dangerous for the audience watching the film: we must be so engaged in the outcome, that when the characters threaten to fall, we share their fate.

In Runaway Jury, the latest of John Grisham's books to be adapted for the screen, the filmmakers take a chance at this high wire act, but fall short of success because they never work without a net. In the film, the opposing sides of a charged trial over gun manufacturers' responsibilities to victims of gun violence -- Dustin Hoffman for the prosecution and Gene Hackman for the defense -- vie for control of their carefully chosen jury. A third party, one of the jurors played by John Cusack, enrages them both by claiming to have the real control, which he aptly proves through several cleverly executed stunts. The suspense, then, should result from this three way tug-of-war for power over the jury, and thus a precedent setting verdict. Only it doesn't.

The major flaws of this film are two-fold. First, the filmmakers give far too much away far too soon. The identity of the third party controlling the jury should have been concealed from the audience for at least a while, yet it is revealed almost as soon as the fact that there is a third party is revealed. While this may be suspenseful for the two counselors, the audience is already yawning while waiting for the real suspense to begin. Subsequently, too many clues about the true identities and motives of the pair running the jury also surface, and although they may have been meant to win our emotional involvement, they completely fail to do so by not giving the actors any sympathetic moments to work with.

Which brings us to the second flaw. With an ensemble cast such as that assembled here, one would expect riveting and dynamic characters for them to play. It is disappointing then, to say the least, that actors of such tangible power as Hoffman and Hackman are relegated to playing characters with no arc to develop.

Hoffman's likeable New Orleans lawyer has painfully little to do, with the exception of a few impassioned moral diatribes on gun violence, and his character remains disappointingly static. Although the filmmakers set up a promising sub-conflict between Hoffman and his precocious young jury expert, the conflict is never allowed to mature, leaving Hoffman nowhere to take his character. As for the young expert: the audience has forgotten he's even part of the story mid way through the second act.

Hackman is also given promising material as the deliciously unscrupulous over funded and over prepared jury analyst for the defense, but he too is forced into a one-dimensional stereotype of remorseless evil by the filmmakers lack of faith. Had his character been given even a shred of humanity, remorse, or compassion -- no mater how fleeting -- Hackman would have been allowed to let that character grow and change. The filmmakers again set this moment up beautifully in the scene between Hackman and the jury runners, but they chicken out at the last minute, and Hackman's character is left as dimensionless as he began.

Even the runners themselves begin as a convincing pair of con-artist lovers, but even they, as the most sympathetic characters are forced into cookie cutter stereotypes and not allowed to fully engage the audience's hearts. Where one might expect anger, disillusionment, and desperation, we get only hints of these burred by cold calculation.

This film fails to be a great suspense thriller because it fails to properly utilize the one ingredient that makes or breaks a film: the audience. With the sheer acting power, the genuine originality of the plot, and the box office gold of John Grisham attached to this film, it should have been a welcome new addition to the annuls of classic suspense. But because the filmmakers lacked the faith to give their characters room to grow, the film becomes stagnated, formulaic, and deadliest of all, unengaging.