cliched characterisation, terrible plot, and distasteful propaganda

Rating: 4/10 (26 March 2001)

Spoiler warning: This review gives away the plot (not that this is a great loss!)
This may have been a return to box office success for William Friedkin, but it wasn't a return to form.
Leaving aside the issue of taste or politics, the film is a cliched courtroom drama. In terms of character and acting, it features the usual defending attorney who doesn't appear to be up to the job (Tommy Lee Jones in a part much better played by Dustin Hoffman in Sleepers or Paul Newman in the Verdict) acting for a difficult but "principled" defendant (Samuel Jackson in part better played by...err...Samuel Jackson in "Time to kill"). Guy Pearce plays the supposedly brilliant, but ruthless and officious, prosecutor in a manner similar to his portrayal in LA Confidential, but without the balancing aspects of insight or ability to learn from mistakes that made his protagonist in the latter film such a compelling character. There is also the ruthless, calculating politician (Bruce Greenwood), the cowardly, slimy politician (Ben Kingsley) and the military hero father who is disappointed in his son (Phillip Baker Hall as, you guessed it, Jones's dad).
The plot points are also badly handled by the writer, director and editor of the film. It was insulting to the intelligence to have to see the Vietnam incidents and the National Security Adviser's burning of the video tape (that must have stunk his Office out!)It would have been better for these points to come out during the cross examination in the court scenes or, in the case of the video tape, during Jones's investigation in Yemen. Similarly Jackson's view of the crowd at the Yemen demonstration would have been better left out so that the viewer, like the jury, has to decide whether to believe him.
Both in terms of plot and taste it would have been better to make Jackson's character and his actions more ambiguous. Supposing we had never seen the demonstration in Yemen from Jackson's point of view. We would have been left with a verdict that left the film more ambiguously challenging and less of a right wing flag waving propaganda exercise (not helped by the crass salute that Jackson receives from his Vietnam counterpart at the end of the film).
However, as the film stands, it is cliched, simplistic, and somewhat offensive.
Finally, what's the point of having written epilogues in a film like this? This is only worthwhile if either, you let viewers know what happened after the story finished in the case of a real life story, or as a joke. On second thoughts, it was pretty funny.