A Time to Kill

I wrote this a few years ago. I hope it sparks some kind of discussion about Jury nullification or vigilante justice. Since the entire thing is a spoiler, I'm not going to use the spoiler tags. Just read the warning at the beginning of the review.


I reveal extremely important details of A Time to Kill in this review, so if that would ruin the movie for you, please don’t read on.

Samuel Jackson plays Carl Lee Hailey. Hailey kills 2 men who raped and almost killed his little girl, Tonya. It is up to Jake Brigance, played by Mathew McConaughey, to try to keep Carl Lee from either spending the rest of his life in prison or being put to death.

McConaughey and Jackson give us great performances and so does most of the supporting cast. Kevin Spacey plays the prosecutor, who you might like and hate at the same time, with the brilliant flare I have grown accustomed to. Sandra Bullock is good enough, as the assistant to Brigance, and Kiefer Sutherland is excellent as the racist, revenge-oriented brother of one of the rapists. Other actors who give good or great performances include: Donald Sutherland, Oliver Platt, Ashley Judd, Patrick McGoohan, and Chris Cooper.

I agree with and like the racial messages in this movie and think that they were very well implemented. I don’t think the average person realizes how much racism there really is. It’s not just in the Ku Klux Klan, a bunch of skinheads or even the bigoted “Archie Bunker” living next door. It’s in you and it’s in me. Until most of us realize that, and make a concerted effort to do something about it, racism will continue to live strong in this world.

I like A Time to Kill a whole lot; it’s actually one of my 50 favorite films of all time, but I wouldn’t feel like I was writing a complete review if I didn’t share my disagreement with the main message this movie seems to convey. That message, the way I see it, is that it is ok to take the law into your own hands, to break the law in order to execute your own version of justice in the form of murder, before the system has even had a chance to succeed or fail.

If this case happened in real life, I would be very disappointed in the jury for acquitting Carl Lee. I view a jury’s duty to follow the law as being similar to a country’s duty to follow the principle of freedom of speech. These two ideas are opposites in a way but the philosophies and significance to society are very much similar.

We shouldn’t censor a statement just because we disagree with it; in fact, we should support the right to say it, or freedom of speech won’t work. For very similar reasons, we should not condone someone breaking the law just because we empathize with that person. “I’d have done it too, if it was my daughter!” A big problem with this way of thinking is: who is to decide what laws should be broken, and for what reason? You? Me? How about a member of the Ku Klux Klan? No to all. We should tell all people to not break the law, and if they do, they should be held accountable by the law, except in rare circumstances. If Carl Lee was legally insane when he committed the murder, I would not be complaining; but he wasn’t, and the Jury knew that.

And what if the murdered suspects are innocent? You can’t even partially undo that kind of injustice. In A Time to Kill, the viewer sees the crime that Carl Lee is responding to; in real life, however, it is usually not that clear cut. If you take the law into your own hands, killing the accused, you are not only breaking one of our most important laws, you might just be murdering an innocent person.

A Time to Kill is an entertaining movie that makes people think long and hard about very important issues, which is great; I just hope it doesn’t inspire too many people to take the law into their own hands by either committing a crime, or exonerating those who do.

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One of the biggest myths told is that being intelligent is the absence of the ability to do stupid things.

Oooooh, I see we're talking about Joel Schumacher!!!! Great thread, Fire!!

In school I done some things on Schumacher and A Time To Kill is probably the biggest reasons to why I became interested in the director.

Schumacher is a self-proclaimed bleeding heart liberal, and you can sometimes tell by seeing his films. A Time To Kill is, in my opinion, a film with all the right intentions but with a not so good result. In his defense one has to mention that it's not Schumacher who wrote the script. John Grisham wrote the book and Akiva Goldsman wrote the screenplay.

Firegod has allready mentioned one of the biggest reasons to why I think the film fails; the weird ending with a killer not having to pay for the murders he committed. The director could easily have justified his actions, because I think there is not a single soul in the audience that didn't sympathize with Jackson (the father of the raped girl), but still sent him to jail. It doesn't make sense and it gives us a pretty scary mob-mentality opinion on what is right and what is wrong. I am pretty sure that Schumacher opposes capital punishment, but he seems to think it is okay to get away with murder when it's for the right reasons.

There are other reasons to why this film annoys me, and I guess that it is the same reasons to why I am sometimes annoyed with the politics that the american democrats stand for. The film is covered in an air of "white supremacy" that I think stinks. Don't get me wrong, as I said before, I understand that it has got all the right intentions and the heart in its right place, but there are things that just bugs me with it.

To me the black people in the film are portraited as helpless and lost without the help of the goodhearted white people. The white working class people, the white trash, are portraited to the reason of all evil in a way, while the Matthew McConaughey's character depicted as the saviour, the white Christ figure, tempted by the whore character played by Sandra Bullock . (Stopped reading yet??). I just think the film expresses a kind of liberal elitist view, a "compassionate conservatism" as Mr Bush would probably have labelled it.

This is just a sample of what I've thought about on this movie but I am perhaps taking it too deep, and I don't want to bore you . I guess I should be satisfied with the fact that it is stirring up some feelings and opinions and is working for a good cause. I just wonder what black and white working class southerners think about this movie. I am sure that it is anquored in reality, but it feels kind of stereotyped.

It was when I saw Flawless, another Schumacher film, that I decided to look a little deeper into "the world of Joel Schumacher" because that film was another film that made me raise my eyebrows. Just like A Time To Kill it is a "good cause film", but this time it is giving homosexuals and transsexuals a voice. However, in the end it is rather a parody than a support of these people which felt awkward to me. And that is about what I felt seeing A Time To Kill as well. At the same time it is of course very very hard to be left unmoved by this horrible story which Schumacher delivers in a very skillfull way.

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The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".

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They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.

I disagree with you on the racial stuff. Is a black defendant in a movie only to be considered strong if he or she is defended by a black lawyer? I'm very surprised at the way you seem to look at Carl Lee; he was a strong man, who actually explained to Jake why he wanted a white lawyer, and probably inspired him to perform the way he did at the end. And I'm wondering, if there was one black person working for Jake, would there be accusations of that person being "a token black"? Did there have to be more than one black person on the defense? Most? All? Just curious.

One thing I thought was real gutsy (and something I thought for sure you'd complain about) was how the NAACP guy and the reverand were portrayed. Most movie makers would be too cowardly to have those characters be petty ******** who Carl Lee turns his back on. I was impressed with the way this movie handled race.

Sure, I can complain a little bit about that too if you like. I think they are stereotypes just as most other characters in this film. I didn't see it as that controversial or gutsy really.

I'm sorry if it upsets you that I don't agree with you that this is one of the best 50 films ever. I just think it is way too shallow and simplistic for that.

To answer some of your questions. I don't think it is about how many black men per white man the movie contains. I think how characters actually being in the film are being depicted is more important. There is absolutely nothing wrong or unrealistic with the set up but would you say that this is an important contribution to the racism debate? You think the film converted any racists? You think it wiped away any prejudice about white working class southerners? You think it shows women as dependent or independent of men?

This is a Hollywood production and is about as controversial as any other Hollywood production. It's a film that people go to and feel good about themselves because their sympathy was with the good guys all along, which to them means they are not a racist. To me that is kind of uninteresting. But as a thriller it is kind of thrilling and entertaining, which is what most people want when they go to the cinema. It is a film pointing out some of the things that is wrong with society but in the end, it kind of reinforces these things instead. Now, this is what it did for me and I understand that it worked differently for you.

If I think Carl is strong? Well, I don't think he's weak. I get the impression of him as an intelligent and proud but bitter person.

I think you misunderstand me on one thing. You think I am critical about the actions the movie depicts. I'm not. I am critical about how the way the actions and the characters are being depicted.

To me Mississippi Burning by Alan Parker is a film that deals with similar things as A Time to Kill but in a much better way.

I like Mississippi Burning, too. I'm kind of surprised you like it, since it is about racism against blacks, and the stars are white. I'm just at a loss as to how blacks are helpless and lost without the help of good hearted white people in A Time to Kill anymore than they would be in real life when a black man commits this kind of crime in this part of the country and asks for the help of a white attorney (which I find to be completely believable).

Whatever man

Oh what the hell, i can't stop myself...

White actors, black actors... What are you on? Do you even read my posts??

Communication breakdown.. I'm out of your thread.

I'm sorry if you're upset; that wasn't my intention. I'm just trying to understand how the blacks in this movie are helpless and lost anymore than they would be in real life.

Edit: What scene made you feel that way? What film shot? What sentence? Anything!