Friday, October 4,1996
C3”
Windy Gordon
Movie Reviewer
Film adaptations of John
Grisham’s novels, such as The Client
or The Pelican Brief, typically take us
racing through layers of legal intrigue
with plot twists and turns. There are
no such aerobatics with A Time to Kill.
The journey, dizzying though it may
be, is one of descent into darkness. In
the first moments we are taken into the
dark reality of violence directed against
the innocence of youth. Those images
have hardly faded when we are swept
into the dark rage of lethal revenge.
Revenge made all the darker by the
realization that we could follow the
same path. Finally, the entire story
comes to rest in the darkest of images,
the reality of racism in a small
southern town.
It would have been easy to fill the
story with darkness so that we could be
lifted up to a bright, promising
conclusion. There is no such ascension
in this film. In fact, the darkest
moment comes in the penultimate
moment of every courtroom drama, the
closing argument. The defense
attorney finds justice not by appealing
to the highest principles of humanity
but by recognizing the darkest reality
of living in a multiracial society. His
recognition, and the moment of
awareness of everyone on the screen, is
a mirror held up to each of us if we
dare to look. Grisham did offer a final
glimpse of hope but it seems to be a
very small candle burning in a deep
and abiding darkness.
For all of the harsh reality the film
is a “must see.” Matthew
McConaughey, as defense attorney
Jake Berganz, is most impressive. He
approaches the trial of a lifetime with
the youthful exuberance and naivete of
someone off to a summer league
softball game but he quickly ages and
matures before our eyes as the events
swirling around him take his youth, his
innocence, and his ability to deceive
himself about where he lives and who
he is. Samuel L. Jackson, as Carl Lee
Hailey, the defendant and outraged
father, is by turns a simple southern
ntan and a brilliant man of the world
who sees strategy and opportunity far
better than his young attorney. He is
captivating in both guises. Sandra
Bullock, as Ellen Roark, the liberal
northerner inexplicably enrolled at Ole’
Miss Law School, was handed a rather
confused role. We are asked to accept
that a brilliant law student, motivated
the highest of principles, would
Arts
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. SAID,
appear in a strange southern town
dressed as if she were on the beach in
southern California. We have to
believe that either Roark is brilliant but
oblivious or that the director wanted to
play off of Bullock’s looks for a little
market boost. Finally, Keiffer
Sutherland appears as yet another
demented bad guy with a one
dimensional view of the world. The
echoes of his dedicated but misguided
Marine NCO from A Few Good Men
almost obscure the pathology of his
racist southerner bent on destroying
Carl Lee Hailey. He is fun to watch
but this boogey man can scare us only
so many times.
In the final analysis, it is
provocative, engaging and thoroughly
entertaining. Joel Schumacher’s
direction remained true to the novel
and the film takes us into Grisham’s
very first make believe case. It is by
far the most emotionally interesting
story Grisham has written and the
events take us to a place that we don’t
really want to visit but need to see.
That place is not Canton, Mississippi,
it is our own view of the people who
live around us.
Rating = ****
Michelle Choate
Movie Reviewer
As a parent, if your 10- year-old
daughter was raped, subsequently
disfigured, and left to die hanging from
a tree by two drunk rednecks, what
would you do? In “A Time to Kill”
based on John Grisham’s first novel,
Carl Lee Hailey (Samuel L. Jackson)
blows the assailants away on the court
house stairs, because he’s convinced
that the crimes will go unpunished.
You see, Hailey is a black man living
in the rural Mississippi south; the rapist
are white locals. Haley hires a young,
white, down-on-his luck liberal lawyer,
Jake Brigance (Matthew
McConaughey), to defend him.
Brigance incidentally also has a
daughter. What follows is a fairly
predictable, but action packed road to
the trial and the obligatory courtroom
drama. Numerous subplots, several of
them left underdeveloped, pepper the
plot and quicken the pace.
The Mississippi setting offers an
uncomfortable glimpse of a racially
charged modern south , where the Klan
is alive and well, that has changed little
in the last three decades.
If you like John Grisham, then
you’ll love this movie in one of the few
instances where the movie is as good as
the book. Relative screen newcomer,
Matthew McConaughey gives an
outstanding performance as Jake
Brigance. No wonder, since Grisham
apparently hand-picked the actor.
Sandra Bullock is somewhat believable
as a law student, with her sites on an
ACLU career, who volunteers to clerk
for Brigance. She along with the
numerous A-list actors in supporting
roles, Donald and Kieffer Sutherland,
Kevin Spacey, seem to have been
chosen more for box office appeal than
for suitability for their roles.
**** Good, solid entertainment.
Highly Recommend
I
Fred Chappell presents his lecture in Dunham Auditorium. He has
won several awards for his literary works. .
Clarion photo by Brad Kimsey
Fred Chappell lectures at BC
Press Release
BC News Bureau
On Thursday, September 13,
Brevard College hosted acclaimed
North Carolina poet and author Fred
Chappell for the Grace Creech West
Lectureship in Southern Literature in
Brevard College’s Dunham
Auditorium. The program featured a
reading, discussion, book signing, and
reception.
Fred Chappell, a native of Canton,
N.C., is the author of a dozen books of
verse, two volumes of stories, one
volume of criticism, and seven novels.
He received his graduate and
undergraduate degrees from Duke
University and has taught for many
years at the University of North
Carolina at Greensboro. He has been
awarded the Sir Walter Raleigh Prize,
the North Carolina Medal in Literature,
and an award in literature from the
National Academy of Arts and Letters.
For his poetry he has been awarded the
Bollingen Prize and the Aiken Taylor
Prize.
The Grace Creech West
Lectureship was established to honor a
former first lady of Brevard College.
The lectureship will bring a
distinguished writer to the Brevard
College campus each year to present a
reading and discussion and to work
meaningfully with faculty and students.