My ass is a banjo

JUST CAUSE (1995)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

The critics excoriated this legal thriller with "Silence of the Lambs" pretensions but I happen to consider it what it is: a fire and brimstone Southern Gothic nightmare of a movie. It has its share of flaws but the first 3/4 of it are fantastic.

Sean Connery is a Harvard law professor, Paul Armstrong, who is against the death penalty. He is a former lawyer but no longer practices. He is married to a woman who was young enough to be Indiana Jones' flame, the spunky Kate Capshaw - Laurie, who once practiced law. Armstrong is recruited by a kind old woman (Ruby Dee) to help reopen the case against her grandson Bobby Earl Ferguson (Blair Underwood), who is allegedly innocent of severely stabbing and killing a young girl. Bobby is on Death Row in Florida and claims he was beaten severely to give his coerced confession. Armstrong has a suave, allegedly trigger-happy cop (Laurence Fishburne) and his partner to deal with, both of whom beat the confession out of Bobby. There is also the hellbent, Bible-spouting serial killer Sullivan (a manic Ed Harris in the Hannibal Lecter part in a less nuanced role) whom Bobby claims is the real killer.

You can't beat the film's location - sunny Florida Everglades with its crickets, alligators, swamps and beautiful rivers. The movie has enough atmosphere for ten thrillers, and those prison cells look creepier than most prisons you see nowadays. In addition, these sights help develop the tension and also help in leaving your logic at the door with its red herrings. A terrifying car ride with Connery and Ferguson in establishing evidence of Bobby's guilt will give you a jolt. Connery's discovery of a supposedly unoccupied house will give one the jitters. His conversations with Sullivan are stultifying and put in there for the Lecter crowd.

When the movie past the hour mark reverses its initial determination of someone's true character, I was reminded of 1991's "Mortal Thoughts" by director Alan Rudolph, which also did a 180 and tended to negate most of its first 3/4 of film time. "Mortal Thoughts" is less nuanced as a thriller if only because its interrogation scenes between Demi Moore and Harvey Keitel were endless and boring. "Just Cause" is fitfully entertaining but it loses steam at around the point that you might think, hey the movie is over.

Sean Connery as always is a titanic actor of great strength and his extreme close-ups (which are more powerful in a movie theater) are as selective and as well placed as his similar close-ups in "The Hunt for Red October." The character is thin but Connery makes the best of it and gives this potboiler class and a touch of dignity. Same with Laurence Fishburne as the vicious cop, Tanny Brown, who hates Bobby and has suspicions about everyone, including Armstrong. Both actors have their moments of over-the-top theatrics and both also show sensitivity and presence to match.

Ed Harris is simply an animal on screen, a wild animal given to hollering like a cartoonish madman. Ruby Dee, Chris Sarandon, Kevin McCarthy and Hope Lange are merely set decoration. The great Southerner himself, Ned Beatty (actually more upper South, Kentucky), gives his role every ounce of legitimacy as Bobby's one-time defense lawyer. And let us not forget a very young Scarlett Johannson as Armstrong's daughter.

Director Arne Glimcher (who made the wonderful "Mambo Kings") gives his film polish and parades the screen with an outstanding cast. The screenplay by Jeb Stuart and Peter Stone is a hot mess, but its touch of amped-up melodramatic spinning of Southern Gothic noir staples is still fast-moving and pulpy enough to warrant a viewing. Hard to say if the movie is pro-death penalty or against it, or if it even matters. When the alligators start chomping away, you might think you are in a different movie than the one that began with a college debate with George Plimpton.