Review of A Time to Kill (1996) by Eliza Cabassoun — 15 Apr 2010

A Time to Kill is a great movie with a star studded cast that includes Matthew McConaughey, Sandra Bullock, Samuel L. Jackson, Kevin Spacey, Oliver Platt, Charles Dutton, Brenda Fricker, Donald Sutherland, Kiefer Sutherland, Patrick McGoohan, Ashley Judd, John Diehl, Chris Cooper, Kurtwood Smith, and M. Emmet Walsh! John Grisham's powerful novel about persistent racial conflict in the South is transformed into a gripping film by Joel Schumacher. It is a very interesting movie, because it talks about a difficult subject: what would you do if someone raped and (almost) killed your child? I guess many of us would like to react the same way as Carl Lee Hailey (Samuel L. Jackson) did. We would like to shoot the one who did it too, instead of waiting for justice to decide.

The movie opens with Tonya Hailey (Rae'Ven Larrymore), a little ten-year-old black girl coming home from the local grocery store. She is walking alone on a dirt road in a small town in Mississippi, when two drunken, racist thugs, come up behind her and hit her with a beer can. They severely beat, rape, and try to kill her. They leave her to die, but she lives. Carl-Lee Hailey (Samuel L. Jackson), the father of the little girl, finds out what happens and wants revenge. The two men are charged with attempted murder shortly after the incident. On the day of their trial, the father comes into the courthouse and shoots killing them in cold blood.

After he is charged with murder, he seeks legal representation with a rookie white lawyer, Jake Tyler Brigance (Mathew McConaughey). This sparks the interest of some black pressure groups, who want to get rid of him, because they want their own lawyers to defend Carl Lee, so they can use him as a status symbol for their own cause. The KKK accuses him of being a "nigger-lover" and threatens to kill him, his family and everybody that works for him. Ashley Judd is his wife, Sandra Bullock is the bright law student who assists McConaughey, Kevin Spacey the brilliant but ferocious prosecutor and Kiefer Sutherland is the young Klan troublemaker. The story is very good, a trifle clichéd but don't let this turn you off. The scene with the KKK coming in was disturbing. The performances turned in by Kevin Spacey and Samuel L Jackson in the courthouse is stirring and fiery in parts. McConaughey is compelling as the young attorney and seeker of fame fighting bigotry as he tries to defend a black man, even though his involvement endangers himself, his family, and all those around him. Absorbing, hard-hitting melodrama of the deep South and a must see for those who have read the book, I believe they have captured the feel of it very accurately. Watch it.