It would be a crime to watch this twice...
 Oct 16th, 2001
Advantages:
Mildly diverting nonsense
Disadvantages:
The bad guy is called Nicholas Parsons !
Recommendable:
Yes
Detailed rating:
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Characters / Performances
Special Effects
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  Crazy-Christian
About me:
Hey, hey, I'm back! Who knows for how long. Too much of me is too much of a good thing in my opinion...
Member since:02.08.2000
Reviews:79
Members who trust:86
Review rated by 96 Ciao members on average: very helpful 
Ah, the things you’ll watch when your wife is working, the kids are sound asleep, and your ISP resolutely refuses to log you onto Ciao! When presented with that scenario the other evening, I was reduced to flicking through the Cable channels looking for something enticing. Instead, I found this! I was reluctant to watch it based on some negative comments on this very site, but I’ll admit I was initially intrigued by the premise and as the movie was about to start...well, hey, why not give it a go.
It looks like I’m giving away a lot of the plot but believe me it’s still less than any trailer or review of the film gives away! Ashley Judd plays Libby Parsons, a seemingly happily married middle-class housewife who is pleasantly surprised when her husband, Nick (Bruce Greenwood, who was excellent in the under-rated TV show, Nowhere Man) buys her the beautiful sailboat she’s had her eye on for some time. Could he really afford it considering the business problems he was going through? They take it out for a trial and end up out at sea and making love for what turns out to be for the last time. When Libby wakes up in the morning, Nick is missing and she is covered in blood. She follows a trail of blood to the side of the boat and sees a knife on the deck. Just as she picks it up the authorities arrive, apparently alerted by a desperate radio message from her now-missing husband.
In short shrift, Nick
is declared dead and she is tried and found guilty of murder. She asks her best friend to look after her young son as she is sent to prison. When her friend stops bringing her son for visits she has to track her down by phone and discovers that she has moved to San Francisco. Understandably upset and suspicious she talks to her son only to hear him suddenly exclaim, "Daddy!" Nick is alive! The line goes dead but no one will believe her and investigate further. A fellow inmate, a former lawyer, informs her of a legal loophole called ‘double jeopardy’, whereby an individual cannot be convicted twice for the same crime. In theory, she could walk up to him on the street and shoot him and no one could do anything about it! She becomes the perfect prisoner, full of remorse, and spends six years patiently building up her physical and mental reserves until she is paroled. She then goes on a hunt for her supposed victim, intent on retribution and the retrieval of her only child.
Her parole officer, Travis Lehman, played by the late, great Tommy Lee Jones (don’t worry, he’s not dead - it’s just that I feel his character could have been introduced earlier!) makes her task more difficult with his overbearing presence and by-the-book orderliness. She is arrested for breaking and entering while in pursuit of information and then makes a dramatic escape from Tommy’s custody into water. His strong sense of duty pushes him into pursuing her doggedly as she desperately tries to clear her name. But as he closes in on her the evidence begins to make him doubt her guilt. (Hey, waitaminute – this is beginning to sound more and more like "The Fugitive"!) And I guess that that is the main problem with this film. We’ve seen it all before and usually done much better. The film twists and turns until it reaches its inevitable conclusion but it provides few genuine surprises. The trouble is not that this film is bad but that it is mediocre. It could just as easily have been a made-for-TV Movie of the Week with no stars and have been equally adept. However, the producers have thrown millions of dollars at it paying for stars that add absolutely nothing to the movie.
Judd is fine but I couldn’t help thinking that she would be more convincing if she was actually a bad guy (gal?). There’s something distinctly amoral about her performance here. (It could, in all honesty, just be boredom!) Jones is obviously meant to be the heavyweight here but his role so closely resembles his aforementioned Oscar-winning turn as U.S. Marshall Gerard it’s surprising that he doesn’t sue himself for copyright infringement! For most of the movie he looks about as interested as a eunuch at a brothel. Greenwood perhaps comes out of this best as the material is pitched more at his level. He’s a competent actor, very good at being smarmy, but rather limited. The remainder of the cast get so little to do it’s not even worth mentioning them.
Presumably, the reason that Judd and Jones agreed to do this in the first place was down to director, Bruce Beresford. He was the director of the 1989 Oscar-winning film, Driving Miss Daisy, although he was controversially overlooked at the time for even a nomination for Best Director. Watching this, perhaps the Academy was right after all! Okay, the story may be fairly limited but that’s no excuse for the movie being flat from beginning to end. Where’s the passion, the exhilarating set pieces, and the clever dialogue? Didn’t they even watch The Fugitive? (I’m sure Tommy has.) Perhaps Beresford needs to stick to character-driven languid pieces, as this type of movie seems to be beyond him. Having said all that, the movie is probably worth watching if you normally like this sort of thing. While lacking in imagination it is turgidly competent and if you find yourself in similar circumstances to those I described for myself then this mildly entertaining nonsense is definitely better than yet another episode of Corrie or ER (Ooh, controversial!)
P.S. And in case you're wondering - no, the loophole of the title doesn't exist. (At least, not in the way it's used in the plot!) Running time - 101 minutes
(For some reason I couldn't log on to imdb.com, so thanks to brianlfc and misslook's excellent ops for factual information!)
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by (1%):
08.07.2004 19:28
I totally agree. This film could have been far far better. And far less predictable too... If only I had joined Ciao before watching, eh? ~James
31.10.2003 16:02
good op, but i completely disagree with it! I thought this film was amazing - i thought Ashley Judd was really good, and for me the plot is far enough away from the fugitive to make this an equally exciting film!
19.10.2001 22:31
very good op, was quite bored during the film i found it pretty predictable... Alex