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Review by Jack Foley |
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IF courtroom thrillers were put on trial for the way in which they enthral
their viewers and reveal their neat little twists, then High Crimes would
be guilty of falling prey to just about every type of cliché in the
genre.
Reuniting Ashley Judd with Morgan Freeman (the two last worked together on
Kiss The Girls), High Crimes is a fairly routine potboiler, made to feel and
look better by the quality of its talented cast - aside from the pairing of
its central duo, the movie also boasts the likes of Jim (The Thin Red Line)
Caviezel, Amanda Peet and Bruce Davison.
Based on a novel by Joseph Finder, High Crimes finds Ashley Judd’s successful
San Francisco-based lawyer, Claire Kubik, forced to defend her husband, Caviezel,
in a military courtroom against charges that he committed mass murder in central
America.
The court case threatens to cast doubt on everything she thought she knew
about her husband, while putting her career and life on the line. But with
the help of Freeman’s wily ex-judge advocate attorney, now a recovering
alcoholic, she sets about proving his innocence, while struggling to cope
with a legal system that is an alien environment to her.
Directed with measured efficiency by Carl Franklin, High Crimes is the type
of thriller that might surprise anyone new to the courtroom genre, but which
is glaringly obvious to anyone used to this sort of thing.
Its twists are hardly surprising, its characters wafer thin and its payoff
less than gratifying; although, somehow, you don’t seem to notice how
bad it is while watching.
Judd has long been a good actress in need of a really decent role, while Freeman
can take the flimsiest material and do something interesting with it. The
chemistry both possess is also undeniable.
Needless to say, the movie works best when both are on screen, with Freeman
especially charismatic as the cantankerous charmer, prone to annoying his
superiors just for the hell of it, while Judd seems to rise above her routine
material whenever she shares screen time with him.
The
flip side, of course, is that the movie’s failings become all the more
glaring. Caviezel is less than convincing in the crucial role of the accused,
while Peet is merely annoying and wasted as Judd’s ditsy, bed-hopping
sister.
Viewers are also likely to be counting down the minutes to its obvious conclusion,
while ticking off the comparisons to other, better, films in the genre (Jagged
Edge, A Few Good Men, etc, etc).
As slick and clever as it thinks it is, and however hard it tries to make
up for its failings by playing to the strengths of its leads, High Crimes
is, ultimately, strictly lightweight fare, better suited to a Saturday night
at home, in front of the video.
