Runaway Jury is a film about a landmark gun trial set in New Orleans. Plotwise, juror Nick Easter (Cusack) uses his influence and his girlfriend (Weisz) to sway the jury and blackmail lawyers on both sides. Still, don't let the all-star cast (including Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman and PCU's very own Jeremy Piven) get you too hot and bothered. The movie is didactic to an extreme and enjoys lecturing the audience on the lost integrity of our judicial system. While it is exciting to see Hackman and Hoffman on screen together for the first time, Hoffman's accent is too reminiscent of his Tootsie days for comfort. -- Leah Colins
The famed directors, the Coen brothers, have come out with their most mainstream film to date in Intolerable Cruelty, a witty and humorous romantic comedy.
Miles Massey (Clooney) is a fast-talking divorce lawyer, widely regarded as the best in the business, while Marylin Rexroth (Zeta-Jones) is a conniving woman who marries a wealthy man with the intention to take him for all he's worth in the form of a hefty divorce settlement. When Massey foils her plan with his shrewd legal skills, Rexroth decides to exact revenge by tricking him into marrying her and then relieving him of his money. What she doesn't expect is to fall in love with him in the process.
Clooney and Zeta-Jones, both a bit older than many of their movie star peers, pull off an elegance and sophistication that few others manage to produce. Their superb acting makes the movie a comedy worth seeing.
-- Todd Goldberg
Clint Eastwood's newest and arguably most ambitious film tells the story of Jimmy (Penn), Dave (Robbins), and Sean (Bacon), three childhood friends whose lives sharply diverge after one of them is abducted from their blue-collar, Boston neighborhood and molested. Decades later, the friends are thrown together after another horrific crime -- the murder of Jimmy's 19 year-old daughter. In an overlapping, emotional whodunit, Sean, now a detective, searches for the killer on familiar streets, while the three men confront the psychological ramifications of the crime that stole their innocence long ago.
Eastwood exerts his presence in the film's crisp visual style as well as its moody score, which he composed. The plot's abudance of emotionally charged scenes provides a showcase for the film's A-list actors, whose performances have already generated well-deserved Oscar buzz (If Sean Penn doesn't make you tear up in this film, you have no heart). The film's biggest issue is that it attempts to accomplish too much, weaving a stirring look at the effects of childhood trauma with the colder precision of a crime story. This balancing act occasionally forces the film to sacrifice depth in both storylines, but still manages be cohesive. Had a less-skilled director made this film, it might have felt cumbersome or overly morose, but Eastwood's experience results in a meticulous and intelligent tale.
-- Cassidy Hartmann
