Comment

Jan 03, 2013akirakato rated this title 2 out of 5 stars
Runaway Jury is a 2003 American drama/thriller film directed by Gary Fleder. It is an adaptation of John Grisham's novel. In New Orleans, a failed day trader at a stock brokerage firm shows up at his former workplace and opens fire on his former colleagues, then turns the gun on himself. Among the dead is Jacob Wood. Two years later, with pro bono attorney Wendell Rohr (Dustin Hoffman), Jacob's widow Celeste takes Vicksburg Firearms to court on the grounds that the company's gross negligence led to her husband's death. As the case goes to trial, the firearm manufacturer takes no chances on the outcome, and they hire Rankin Fitch (Gene Hackman), a "jury consultant" who makes it his business to see that he knows enough about the jurors to be able to guarantee the result of the trial. Before I viewed this film, I happened to come to know the school shootong, in which on December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza, aged 20, killed 27 people and himself at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. He first killed his mother at their shared home before taking her guns and driving to the school. During the attack, 20 first-grade children aged six and seven were killed, along with six adults, including the principal and the school psychologist. I knew there have been a great number of school shooting tragedies in North America---in the States in particular. So when, in this movie, the gun manufacturer is found liable, with the jury awarding $110 million in general damages to Celeste Wood, I felt that justice has been done. After all, however, the film is quite unrealistic and unbelievable because I can hardly believe that you could buy a verdict relying on a single juror---Nick Easter (John Cusack), an electronics store clerk on the surface, but in realty a talented former law student drop-out with a hidden motive to help the shooting victims in his hometown. If I hadn't seen two big names---Dustin Hoffman and Gene Hackman on the DVD cover, I wouldn't have viewed the movie.