Cate McCall (Kate Beckinsale) is going through tough times. As a lawyer she is running the risk of losing her job and as a mother there is the threat of no longer being able to see her daughter. She is struggling to get away from an alcohol addiction and to save her job she is forced to take a case she doesn’t have any expertise about. Her job is to try to get a woman out of jail who has been convicted for murder but who tells her she is innocent. When she starts investigating the case she finds out there are details about the case which don’t seem to add up and that she is running a big risk herself by looking into them.
It seems that nowadays not enough movies are made which are set in courtrooms. They only seem to be shown in romcoms or TV shows. Movie history shows that great movies have been made which mostly take place in them (12 Angry Men, Judgement at Nuremberg en Witness for the Prosecution to name a few). Unfortunately this movie can’t be added to that list.
The reason for this is that the story tries to let the viewer care for Cate by showing the struggle she has between her work and her family. The way this is done however doesn’t work in its advantage. The moments with her family are far and few between and the case she is working on almost seems to continue without her. She sometimes tries to follow op clues, but you never get the feeling that she is doing everything to get to the bottom of the case. Everything that happens appears to do so because it moves along the story, not because she found things to break the case.
Besides this the experience is also frustrating to the viewer because some of the big plot points that are important for the case suddenly seem to disappear which artificially creates extra drama which because of it never convinces and only helps to frustrate even further. Beckinsale is good, which is also the case for Nick Nolte (although it’s getting tougher to understand what he is saying). As a movie this is as middle of the road as they come and there are no moments which will succeed in raising your heart rate which every good thriller should be able to do.
Courtroom dramas have the potential to be riveting, but this one looks and sounds so boring, especially with that title.
Yeah, it didn’t bring all the stuff I love about them and therefore was quite disappointing.
Hmmm, interesting role for Kate, I hardly see her in serious roles like this one. Not really keen in seeing this one tho.
I wished I could be more positive about the movie but it just didn’t manage to reach the heights of other movies in the genre.