7/24/96
MOVIE REVIEW: A Time To Kill
Grisham's 'Time' too true to novel

By JIM SEAVOR
Journal-Bulletin Arts Writer

***1/2 (out of five)
Starring Matthew McConaughey, Sandra Bullock, Samuel L. Jackson. A Warner Bros. picture written by Akiva Goldsman, directed by Joel Schumacher. Rated R, contains violence, adult themes, profanity. Running time: 150 minutes.

A Time To Kill is filled with strong performances and deals with a major problem -- the racism that lurks just beneath the surface in America. But the film version of John Grisham's first novel still winds up more melodrama than drama.

I came away feeling everyone involved tried to stay too close to the novel instead of creating something different for a different medium. (Grisham is one of the producers and that may

have something to do with it.) There are so many things going on that the film has difficulty staying focused.

It begins strongly.

Two drunken Mississippi rednecks brutally rape and beat a 10-year-old black girl. Her father, convinced a white jury would let the rapists off easy, guns them down. A young white lawyer takes the case, seeing it as a chance to get good publicity and help his career. Instead, the trial brings out all the racial tension lurking in the town. Soon the Klan is marching through the streets, crosses and homes are burned and violence tears the town and families apart.

An inspection of racism in this country is timely, with black churches being burned, and film, with its power to move an audience, is a good medium for raising the issue. However, A Time To Kill doesn't totally mesh the world outside the courtroom with the principal characters. While they are nicely realized, the villains all too often are two-dimensional, stock creations. There are times when A Time To Kill almost seems paint-by-numbers in its approach.

But director Joel Schumacher does get some marvelous performances.

Samuel L. Jackson brings a wondrous fire to the role of the avenging father. He makes the man's pain real, slowly revealing the shrewdness behind his actions. When late in the film he explains why he chose the white young lawyer to represent him, the film reaches the impact it should have had all along. "America is at war," Jackson says, "and you're on the other side." . . . "You're one of the bad guys." His local-boy, white lawyer is the only one who might make the white jury see beyond color.

Matthew McConaughey gets the role of his career as that young lawyer. A Time To Kill revolves around him. He is the one with all the closeups and the camera loves him. Luckily he can also act. He remains sympathetic even while his action shatters lives. There is a naturalness to what he does that helps you identify.

Sandra Bullock, who has one of the most winning personalities in film, does it again in this movie. She is a law student from a long line of Boston lawyers and brings a sense of innocence as well as the smarts to the role of someone who has no idea of the passions the case will arouse.

Kevin Spacey, who is as intense as Bullock is winning, commits grand larceny as the district attorney who sees the case as a stepping stone to the governorship. Whenever he appears on screen you can't keep your eyes off him. Talk about power!

Brenda Fricker and Patrick McGoohan stand out as McConaughey's secretary and the good-old-boy judge, but Donald Sutherland is wasted as the disbarred alcoholic lawyer who once was McConaughey's mentor.

Director Schumacher does know how to pace a film and his set pieces are well handled: that Klan march through the streets and the resulting violence; the beating and rape, suggested more than shown with quick cuts and jagged camera angles. There is no question about the quality of the major performances. But he never completely captures the emotions on the street. The outside world, despite its violence, never achieves the status of another character, one that's just as powerful as any other.