Just Cause

"Just Cause" is one of those movies best seen after you turn off your brain. Now I am not saying it's a stupid or bad film....but it has such a convoluted and difficult to believe plot that it's best enjoyed without thinking through all the details. If you do think about them, you're bound to be disappointed.

The story is about a man on death row (Blair Underwood) whose mother (Roby Dee) is able to convince a Harvard Professor (Sean Connery) to leave academia in order to help him with his appeal. The professor is successful and evidence is uncovered that ends up with the man's release. However, there is MUCH more to the film than this....and the story goes in a completely different direction and leads to many surprises.

I think this is a film where some of the performances (particular Ed Harris) are better than the actual story. The story is just completely unbelievable....but again, if you can put this aside, the film is enjoyable.

By the way, if you care this film was made throughout Florida...Gainesville up north and the Ft. Myers/Miami areas in the south. As a Floridian, I found the local scenes pretty exciting.

The film is mediocre, but seeing Ed Harris' performance as a manipulative serial killer (I'm not giving anything away by telling you this) is worth the entire movie. Too often serial killers are played as geniuses--Jack in "The Profiler" or Kevin Spacey's character in "Seven"; Harris creates a malignant redneck monster that really will startle and chill you. No one goes from zero to sixty like Harris since George C. Scott left us; in this film he modulates his voice amazingly, sounding quietly venomous one moment and then thundering like a fire and brimstone Southern minister. In Connery's case, it's just bad casting: he plays an academic consulting lawyer (a la Dershowitz {sp?}) who combats Fishburne's menacing but canny Southern cop. Connery's other roles and the notion of him they have created in us make it impossible for him to play the effete lawyer that the script seems to call for.

This movie really is a mixed bag. On the one hand, the story and concept of the movie are really good, tense and have some nice plot twists in it. But than again on the other hand, it all is told very slow, without style and uninvolved. Still I regard "Just Cause" as an above average thriller simply because of the fine cast.

Maybe Sean Connery was miscast in his role. I mean, he isn't really that believable as a the main 'hero' and father of a young daughter (played by a still very young Scarlett Johansson by the way) and husband of Kate Capshaw. I feel that he simply was too old for the role to be really credible in it. However Sean Connerey is of course a great actor and that is the only reason why he is still able to carry the movie as good as he does. But he of course is helped by a very solid supporting cast that consists out of actors like Laurence Fishburne, Blair Underwood, Ned Beatty, Hope Lange, Lynne Thigpen and Ed Harris. All actors are really good but some of them are highly underused at the same time, which is a real shame, as well as a missed opportunity. Especially Ed Harris is just totally great in his role as a psychopathic serial killer. He's truly chilling and acting superbly. Normally he doesn't play this ruthless, chilling sort of roles in movies, so he really surprises with his role in this one. His performance alone is already more than enough reason to watch this movie. However due to the fact that the story is told without much style and too formulaic, none of the characters in the movie really work out well because it feels all too distant.

It really is the way of storytelling that kills all the movie its fine potential. Arne Glimcher directs the movie with little style and keeps the pace too low at times. Because of this, we as viewers, never really get involved with the story or any of it's characters.

It really is too bad, for "Just Cause" had more than enough potential. A fine cast and a slick story with some unexpected twists and turns in it in which nothing is what it seems. The cast and story are the only reason why this movie is still an above average thriller, that will probably still please the fan of the genre. It however is an eternal shame that the movie is lacking in its story telling and style, or else this movie could had been a real classic in its genre.

7/10

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Although it borrows heavily from better and better-known films, Just Cause is quite entertaining. Several turns are predictable or hard to believe, but this film also shows some interesting character development with Sean Connery, who seems to be a little too old for this role, but was quite believable as the law teacher, who had to learn some lessons about reality and law as it is practised in reality. Laurence Fishburne and Ed Harris seem to enjoy their performances, which they deliver with much relish, and the atmosphere of the town and the Everglades are also captured nicely. But since the plot, especially the last third or so, is really contrived, and Kate Capshaw is so annoyingly bad and shallow in a key part that usually calls for a more sensitive performance, I can not really recommend this film wholeheartedly without having a guilty conscience. See it only if you have nothing else to watch.

Just Cause takes some of the best parts of three films, Cape Fear, A Touch of Evil and Silence of the Lambs and mixes it together to come up with a good thriller of a film.

Sean Connery is a liberal law professor, married to a former Assistant District Attorney, Kate Capshaw and he's a crusader against capital punishment. Blair Underwood's grandmother Ruby Dee buttonholes Connery at a conference and persuades him to handle her grandson's appeal. He's sitting on death row for the murder of a young girl.

When Connery arrives in this rural Florida county he's up against a tough sheriff played by Laurence Fishburne who's about as ruthless in his crime solving as Orson Welles was in Touch of Evil.

Later on after Connery gets the verdict set aside with evidence he's uncovered, he's feeling pretty good about himself. At that point the film takes a decided turn from Touch of Evil to Cape Fear.

To say that all is not what it seems is to put it mildly. The cast uniformly turns in some good performances. Special mention must be made of Ed Harris who plays a Hannibal Lecter like serial killer on death row with Underwood. He will make your skin crawl and he starts making Connery rethink some of those comfortable liberal premises he's been basing his convictions on. Many a confirmed liberal I've known has come out thinking quite differently once they've become a crime victim.

Of course the reverse is equally true. Many a law and order conservative if they ever get involved on the wrong end of the criminal justice system wants to make real sure all his rights are indeed guaranteed.

Criminal justice is not an end, but a process and a never ending one at that for all society. I guess if Just Cause has a moral that would probably be it.