Runaway Jury, 2003

Have to admit, this movie is terrific. A real success!

The funny thing is, I often saw this movie on TV, but always avoided it, because I confused it with another movie, "The Juror", 1996, in which Demi Moore was the main cast. (That movie was OK, and once I watched it, I did not want to watch it again!).

Since reading John Grisham's "The Street Lawyer" and "The firm", I have begun to be curious about movies based on his books more than before. I had watched "The Pelican Breef", "A time to kill" & "The Client" long before, and thought they were OK. After reading "The Firm", I searched for the movie based on that book to watch, and was a bit disappointed, for the book was much better than the movie.

Never read "The runaway jury" before, and practically avoided reading it, for I was worry that knowing the book would make me become too difficult to please with the movie (as in the case of "The Firm").

Before watching this movie, I have heard quite a bit of bad gossips about John Cusack, as well as watched a few of his other movies, all of which were very ordinary. Saw him in this movie "The Runaway Jury", I thought I was about to see just another ordinary movie.

Surprisingly, John Cusack was so brilliant in his role in this movie (as Nicholas Easter). The body language he used was so good, so superb!

Dustin Hoffman & Gene Hackman were also superb in their role. I almost thought that they were real enemies to each other in real life, one was so dignify, honest, the other was so slimy and greedy.

(Strange, Gene Hackman also played the role of a slimy character in "The Firm" (1993)).

Plot:

A young father was gunned down by a dissatisfied ex-colleague, at the same time with his other fellow workers who happened to be at the workplace at the time. His widowed decided to sue the gun manufacturer, with the hope that the government would restrict the laws related to buying and owning any gun.

Nicholas Easter was chosen to be one among the jurors in this case. He seemed to try his best to wriggle out of his duty, and to the normal eyes, he was just an opportunist, a greedy and lazy young man.

The truth was, Nicholas Easter happened to blame himself partly for the death of one of his childhood friends, who was gunned down by a kid in the same school with his group. He could not help his friend to avoid the bullets on that specific day, and growing up, decided to do something about it.

With the dead kid's sister, Marlee (Rachel Weisz), Nicholas Easter played quite a lot of tricks on the jurors, as well as on the laywers of the court case.

(Rachel Weisz did look very mysterious, serious and haunting with her big sad eyes and determined attitude, quite appropriate for the role of Marlee. However, I was surprised that she and Nicholas Easter dared playing their amateur game against a ruthless gun manufacturer and still alive and kicking at the end of the movie...).

Seemed as the court case in the book was about tobacco, while in the movie, it was about guns.

The outcome? Real good, with a terrific ending!

The movie in general, was real impressive!

(From some reviews I read, some people who read the book first, did not like this movie too much due to all the changes and differences between the book and the movie. Since I did not read the book, the movie was above my expectation!).