Courtroom drama of 'The Juror' lacks commitment
By Parvathi Nayar Narayan
JAKARTA (JP): There is an unavoidable feeling of deja vu which assails one watching The Juror. Then the penny drops. We have indeed seen this before -- in Trial By Jury starring Joanne Whalley-Kilmer, William Hurt and Armand Assante. The film was implausible and tiresome then. Replacing the irritating accents of Whalley-Kilmer with the dulcet tones of Demi Moore, and combining the Hurt-Assante personas into Alec Baldwin's character are distinct improvements -- but it's really not enough. Is Hollywood really that desperate for new material?
Demi Moore plays Annie Laird, 9-5 worker by necessity and sculptor-at-night by choice. Laird is a single parent who hankers for a bit of excitement in her life and decides that serving on a jury panel is just the thing to provide it. After seeing the mass hysteria evoked by, say, the Simpson trial -- not to mention the millions that can be made by selling the dirt on a high profile trial -- who can blame her?
The trial in question is the open-and-shut case of a mob murder with the nasty twist that it is a young boy who was killed. On trial is the powerful Mafioso bossman Louis Boffano (Tony Lo Bianco). Moore convinces the lawyers of her suitability to be on the jury -- she never reads newspapers -- and despite the judge offering her many opt-outs, succeeds in getting herself picked.
All of which happens within about 10 minutes into the film andif Moore is delighted, the Mafioso's underling known as the Teacher (Alec Baldwin) is over the moon. He is a regular psychowho has jury tampering on his brain and now has the rest of the movie to indulge in it. In Moore he sees a woman who is smart but defenseless (the movie was filmed before Moore did her left- handed pushups in a talk show), single and a mother to boot. The last detail of course is the most important, offering the most opportunities to apply the pressure and turn the screws. Moore obliges as the puppet we see Baldwin making somewhere alongthe film -- inspired by Moore's sculptures? As per his demands she veers from passive acceptance to oratory that seems like anoutrageously abridged version of Twelve Angry Men (you remember, the definitive film on juries that takes place entirely within the room where the jury is sequestered). We are asked to believe that it's the mother's heart that allows for these dramatic feats.
At the heart of the movie is a deeper problem. However trite andidealistic it may sound, the proposition that if necessary thelarger ideals of Justice, Community and Truth are worth sacrificing for the individual, is a difficult one to market. Even if the sacrifice is around that most powerful of relationships, mother and son. For the audience to buy sympathetically into this, they needed to connect completely with the characters of Moore and her son. When Sean Connery tells Michelle Pfeiffer in The Russia House 'you are my country' and implies that it is worth giving up his country for her, we as an audience see it, buy it, and what's more, applaud it. Similar sentiments just don't carry the same conviction in The Juror. Moore is merely competent where passion is needed.
Alec Baldwin, it must be admitted, is surprisingly effective asthe psychopathic Teacher. Where his bland good looks made for was in The Getaway or The Marrying Man, here it gives him acertain edge. He carries out his evil little plots with a sadistic glee that contrasts oddly and therefore interestinglywith his cherubic air.
Okay, so The Juror is an adequate film. But then again, itfalls into the category of the courtroom drama, and few other genres offer quite as much scope for drama and tension, eloquentdialogue, character development and dramatic denouement. Moviesabout legal trials are meant to be riveting, whether punchy (A Few Good Men) or amusing (Legal Eagles) or did-he-didn't-hesuspense (Jagged Edge). They're not meant to be tepid. Or tedious. Or even just plain adequate.