With all the talent converging on this film, you'd think that someone could have stepped back and said, "I think we got a stink bomb on our hands--let's try and fix it." But no, the film went ahead, and unfortunately (fortunately for all involved, however), "Double Jeopardy" was released during that time of year when studios dump their unsalvagable projects, and this film managed to be one of the pieces of flotsam that floated to the top.
If you've seen the trailer or the TV ad for the film, rest assured that you know the entire plot. I was hoping against hope that the film would be a little more engaging, somewhat more endearing, and much more action packed than the commercial, but I was disappointed on all counts. And because of the plot-revealing ads, all traces of suspense are swiftly bled away, leaving you to play "connect the scene" until you've seen the last scene (and yes, it is the one with Judd aiming a gun at her husband). The film traipses along without rhyme and less reason, hoping to distract you from the glaring plot holes by adding periodic kindling to your rage for revenge and giving Tommy Lee Jones wisecrack lines to deliver in his patented deadpan.
I can't even begin to ennumerate the volumes of non sequiturs, plot inconsistancies, sketchy leaps of logic, and loose ends scattered about this film. Ashley Judd wakes up on a boat covered in blood. Fine. How do the authorities know it is the blood of the husband she purports to have murdered? Weare not told, though such a procedure is mandatory. Yet the film demands that you assume the forensics team overlooked that detail The prosecution offers as evidence a tape of a distress call allegedly made by said husband, "I've been stabbed." But if she was really stabbing him would she allow him time to make the call? Shouldn't we hear her somewhere in the background trying to finish the job? Of course not. And so on and so on, ad absurdum. In its attempt to raise your miscarriage of justice dudgeon, the film makes the trial, and all subsequent injustices, howlingly and vapidly ludicrous. Even the bad guy, played unconvincingly by Bruce Greenwood, can't even take a lesson from past movie villains. His inexplicable relapse into the Auric Goldfinger school of "I-am-going-to-put-you-in-my- machine-of-death-and-leave-you-to-die-Mr. Bond" is inexcusable. Why do bad guys always leave the death of their foes up to fate?
Judd tries hard, real hard, to be an emotional center and to give her quest the gravity it deserves. Unfortunately, the film won't give her time--it's too busy rushing her through the post-murder grieving, the trial, the jail time, and the parole in order to get the the real business of the plot: the incredible (as in "not credible") quest to track down her undead (meaning, of course, "not really dead") husband. Even turning off your brain doesn't work here: the chases are banal, what remains of the suspense is tepid, and the only thing that really looks great is the not-so-subtle plug for Armani and Judd's dazzling entrance to a swank Nawlins shindig.
But the logical fallacies don't end here. Somehow, this flick has made a lot of money and has raised Judd's salary to something like $8 million. But coming from a film where a fat roll of twenty dollar bills appears fortuitously in a tomato garden, I suppose anything can happen.
If you've seen the trailer or the TV ad for the film, rest assured that you know the entire plot. I was hoping against hope that the film would be a little more engaging, somewhat more endearing, and much more action packed than the commercial, but I was disappointed on all counts. And because of the plot-revealing ads, all traces of suspense are swiftly bled away, leaving you to play "connect the scene" until you've seen the last scene (and yes, it is the one with Judd aiming a gun at her husband). The film traipses along without rhyme and less reason, hoping to distract you from the glaring plot holes by adding periodic kindling to your rage for revenge and giving Tommy Lee Jones wisecrack lines to deliver in his patented deadpan.
I can't even begin to ennumerate the volumes of non sequiturs, plot inconsistancies, sketchy leaps of logic, and loose ends scattered about this film. Ashley Judd wakes up on a boat covered in blood. Fine. How do the authorities know it is the blood of the husband she purports to have murdered? Weare not told, though such a procedure is mandatory. Yet the film demands that you assume the forensics team overlooked that detail The prosecution offers as evidence a tape of a distress call allegedly made by said husband, "I've been stabbed." But if she was really stabbing him would she allow him time to make the call? Shouldn't we hear her somewhere in the background trying to finish the job? Of course not. And so on and so on, ad absurdum. In its attempt to raise your miscarriage of justice dudgeon, the film makes the trial, and all subsequent injustices, howlingly and vapidly ludicrous. Even the bad guy, played unconvincingly by Bruce Greenwood, can't even take a lesson from past movie villains. His inexplicable relapse into the Auric Goldfinger school of "I-am-going-to-put-you-in-my- machine-of-death-and-leave-you-to-die-Mr. Bond" is inexcusable. Why do bad guys always leave the death of their foes up to fate?
Judd tries hard, real hard, to be an emotional center and to give her quest the gravity it deserves. Unfortunately, the film won't give her time--it's too busy rushing her through the post-murder grieving, the trial, the jail time, and the parole in order to get the the real business of the plot: the incredible (as in "not credible") quest to track down her undead (meaning, of course, "not really dead") husband. Even turning off your brain doesn't work here: the chases are banal, what remains of the suspense is tepid, and the only thing that really looks great is the not-so-subtle plug for Armani and Judd's dazzling entrance to a swank Nawlins shindig.
But the logical fallacies don't end here. Somehow, this flick has made a lot of money and has raised Judd's salary to something like $8 million. But coming from a film where a fat roll of twenty dollar bills appears fortuitously in a tomato garden, I suppose anything can happen.