A Time to Kill . Tucson Weekly . 08-08-96

A Time to Kill

DIRECTED BY: Joel Schumacher

REVIEWED: 08-08-96

An overblown but entertaining courtroom drama, based on a John Grisham novel, about racial strife in the deep South. Samuel L. Jackson plays a humble working man driven to take the law into his own hands when a pair of good ol' boys rape his young daughter; Matthew McConaughey plays the white-bread attorney who decides to defend him. (Chris Cooper is also in this movie, in a strange reprise of his role in Lone Star.) Somewhere in there is Sandra Bullock, playing an eager young law student who both helps and distracts the white guy from his lawyerin'. Yes, morality is laid out on a nice flat grid, but the fact that there even is a moral battle here gives this movie a heavy, heavy dose of tension and drama, despite the fact that its view of the South and the people in it are so stereotyped they're practically cartoons. If only director Joel Schumacher (of Batman Forever fame) would leave out the swelling music, this movie might have some real power.

--Stacey Richter

Other Films by Joel Schumacher
Batman & Robin
Batman Forever
Eight MM
Flawless
Lost Boys

Film Vault Suggested Links
Illtown
Deceiver
Gang Related

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