"A Time To Kill" is based on the John Grisham novel - in Mississippi two drunken rednecks brutally rape and attempt to murder a young black girl. Her father, Carl Lee Hailey (Samuel L. Jackson) in his grief and anger shoots both men as they enter the courthouse for their pre-trial hearing and faces a trial that could lead to his execution if he is found guilty of their murder. An ambitious young lawyer, Jake Tyler Brigance (Matthew McConaughey) takes on his defence no matter what the cost to his family and friends who are under threat from the Klu Klux Klan.
The problem with the central premise is that Carl Lee Hailey guns down the two men before their trial so we don't know for certain they are going to get away with their terrible crime - and with the evidence against them it would be a racist jury indeed who found them innocent. This takes away a lot of the empathy for his plight as he clearly premeditates the killing and he is prepared to leave his family destitute if he receives life imprisonment or the death penalty. The only defence really offered is that it is racist to consider his actions unjustified, even though he manages to badly wound a police officer (leading to the amputation of his leg) - clearly an accident, but firing guns in crowded rooms is bound to cause that kind of mishap. The direction and editing do not help, with pointless scenes such as those that set to prove that Lee Hailey killed the men - a fact that wasn't in doubt. The handling of the whole racism issue is clumsily handled, as we are frequently told that the area is racist and yet they elected a black sheriff.
Brigance is hardly a sympathetic character either, spending the evening before the start of the biggest trial of his career getting drunk and flirting with one of his helpers while his wife is out of town. The cast of the film is hard to fault, with even minor roles portrayed by famous artists such as Sandra Bullock, Kevin Spacey, Donald and Kiefer Sutherland and Patrick McGoohan. This tends to be a distraction as very few of the supporting cast have much to do. There is a strong script and fine acting all round, though McConaughey in his breakthrough role is somewhat overshadowed by the rest of the starry cast. The script is strong, in particular the closing speech of the trial is very powerful as it describes in greater detail the full horror of the actions of the murdered men. However the script in the main is heavily biased towards a very specific agenda and is highly manipulative.
Overall the film left a bad taste in my mouth when the credits rolled as the message it seemed to be delivering was that it is okay to be a vigilante and anyone who thinks Lee Hailey deserved punishment for his actions is a racist. While I felt sorry for him and did not think he deserved the death penalty, allowing him to get away scot-free was going too far in my opinion. Not having read the novel I am unable to say where exactly the fault lies, but the cast despite their best efforts are unable to raise the material beyond its limitations.
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