If only I had enjoyed it as well as the people behind me.
High Crimes looks like a courtroom drama, but it unfolds like a mystery. Ron (Jim Caviezel) has been arrested, and his wife Claire (Ashley Judd), an up-and-coming lawyer, must try to get him off. She enlists the help of former Navy lawyer Charlie Grimes (Morgan Freeman).
The charge is murder, and the case will be tried in a military court. Ron is accused of killing seven villagers in what is called the Las Colinas Massacre. A Marine at the time, Ron is said to have overstepped his authority when he killed the villagers.
But the case is fishy. The “eyewitness” accounts seem to have been coerced and many of the witnesses have mysteriously died. It seems the real culprit was acting under the orders of then-Colonel Bill Marks, a man who has risen in rank and is now a high-level advisor to the president.
Casting a pall of doubt over the case is Ron himself, who until his arrest was known to his wife as Tom. In the intervening years he’d changed his name, his identity, his whole persona.
Judd, (last “seen” on the radio call-in show Car Talk), also performs well. She has less room to move because she’s the maguffin, the character driving the action. She doesn’t get to be as colorful as Freeman. Nevertheless, she keeps the movie going, and in one or two key scenes, she really performs.
Amanda Peet plays Claire’s sister. She appears to have a good time being a little nutty and a little slutty. She can’t resist a man in uniform. She moves in with Claire because she was evicted, and having her around gives the movie a nice texture. She’s a welcome contrast to the all-business Judd/Freeman team who are focused on getting Tom/Ron exonerated, or at least acquitted.
Morgan Freeman is wonderful. His character is also a lawyer, but one who is getting older, who never made it big, and who lives in poverty. Hollywood is notorious for getting “poverty” wrong, but Freeman looks poor, lives poor, dresses poor, and is a believable next-door neighbor, without giving up his actor’s charisma and charm.
Although High Crimes is partly a courtroom drama, it still has the feel of a mystery novel. Clues are revealed one at a time to our heroes and to the audience. An obligatory red herring or two throw us off the track before the final outcome is revealed.
My prejudice about all mysteries being the same is reinforced by High Crimes, a by-the-numbers mystery/courtroom drama for the Matlock crowd. I didn’t actually dislike it, but it is conventional, innocuous, and cinematically uninteresting. I feel as though I could have watched just about any TV movie of the week and gotten as much from it (except for the great performances by the stars).
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