court-case

In the pantheon of 90s Grisham adaptations this one sits in the middle, some way below The Firm. The cast is overstuffed and even 135 minutes isn’t enough to find work for all of them. Voight is good value as Drummond, full of expensive false courtesy, and DeVito might be the best thing in it as Deck, the paralegal who keeps failing the bar. Claire Danes is good too, stuck in a subplot with no route back to the insurance case; the film keeps setting the trial down to go and check on Kelly Riker. The rest is genre-by-numbers, and it’s no surprise I forgot that I’d already seen it until I was a fair way in.

Third in the summer’s John Cusack rotation, and the first where he’s actively running the con rather than absorbing someone else’s. Nick Easter arrives with the whole thing planned, and the fun is watching him work rather than watching him decide.

Which makes him the odd one out. David Shayne in Bullets Over Broadway trades his principles away a concession at a time. Buck Weaver in Eight Men Out is ruined for a compromise he never actually made, done for standing in the room. Even Martin Blank, who at least chose his profession, spends Grosse Pointe Blank trying to reverse out of it. (Incidentally: one of my favourite films. Cannot wait to rewatch it.) Here, Easter is the one who got there first, and knew what he was doing when he did.

The film belongs to the excellent Hackman. Rankin Fitch (a name that simply screams “Grisham adaptation”) with his wall of monitors is doing what Cusack usually does: playing it straight while everything around him gets sillier. And, of course, the plot gets sillier by the minute.

Hoffman, sharing a screen with Hackman for the first time in their careers, is somehow given nothing to do. I’ve seen this film before but had very little memory of it, and I suspect that will be the case again should I ever press play once more.