The Runaway Jury
Going into it, I expected a reasonably slick, entertaining Grisham movie about people in expensive suits pulling legal tricks on one another until the good guys beat the bad guys?and The Runaway Jury is certainly that. But it's something else as well: a political memo to American liberals, warning them that criminals have stolen the country, and that the country must be stolen back. (Warning: this column is one big plot spoiler, so keep reading at your peril.)
The Runaway Jury is an ensemble picture built around a New Orleans civil trial. A fictional gun manufacturer is being sued by a widow who lost her husband in a workplace shooting spree that involved a legally purchased firearm. The plantiff's lawyer, Wendell Rohr (Hoffman, whose courtly yet indistinct Southern drawl may conjure memories of Tootsie) contends that if the gun manufacturer had properly monitored the sales of its product and stepped in to stop private dealers from buying dozens of guns and reselling them to other private individuals, the rampage would not have happened.
On the other side of the aisle lurks the gun manufacturer, its chief counsel, Durwood Cable (Davison) and a fearsome man named Rankin Fitch (Hackman) who heads a private jury-consulting firm. Fitch's firm is a gang of black-bag fixers?brutes who will commit any outrage, from illegal surveillance to blackmail, robbery and assault, in order to produce the outcome that big business wants.
Of course the audience is supposed to root against the gun manufacturer not just because Hollywood thinks guns are bad (unless The Rock or Vin Diesel is carrying them), but also because the gun manufacturer is wealthy and powerful and the widow isn't (that pesky root-for-the-underdog thing). I don't doubt that America's gun manufacturers and enthusiasts will decry The Runaway Jury. But as incredible as it might sound, the script's politically charged talk about the uses and abuses of the Second Amendment amounts to rhetorical sleight-of-hand.
In Grisham's novel, which came out in 2000, the untouchable bad guys were cigarette manufacturers. Now that cigarette manufacturers are losing major lawsuits and smokers are being painted as America's great Satan, the film needed a different bad guy. In another era, it might have been the auto industry, or the nuclear industry. The film's real purpose?the thing that fires up its melodramatic engines?is the idea (widely held) that the American right seized power by unethical, legally suspect means, and stays in power via the same methods. If the American left ever hopes to even the score, it will have to quit pussyfooting around and fight dirty.
The firearms company represents America's business elite, who, according to Jury's script, exploit and destroy average American lives for profit while defending their selfishness as an exercise in free expression and the right to earn a living. The contest between big business and its supposedly monolithic opposition?leftist academics, unions, the ACLU and the rest?is really no contest at all, because big business has more money than its foes and better understands how to manipulate the political system in order to protect its bottom line. The jury represents the American voter, which decides what side is best equipped to run the country, the right or the left. The judge (McGill's character) represents the Supreme Court, which is cozy with power elites but has to fake impartiality for survival's sake.
Before the trial even begins, the jury-selection company illegally rigs the defense team with surveillance devices, including tiny cameras and microphones, in order to see and hear everything that goes on in the courtroom in real time. They observe the proceedings from across the street and whisper advice into lawyers' ears via radio microphone, like a coach giving orders to a quarterback (in this interpretation, the jury consultants are lobbyists hired by big business to give politicians their marching orders). Fitch's fixers are even privy to private conversations at the judge's bench and in his private chambers. In other words, American business buys access to every institution it can and steals access elsewhere.
But there's a fly in the ointment. Fitch suspects that Cusack's juror, videogame dealer Nick Easter, is a plant who snuck onto the jury in order to tamper with it. (With his calm smiles and deadpan looks of concern, Easter comes on like a young, self-interested hipster version of Henry Fonda in 12 Angry Men.) At first, Easter's motives are opaque; all we know is that he's in cahoots with his girlfriend (Rachel Weisz) to dig up dirt on everyone related to the trial, including Fitch's team. In due course, the dynamic duo approaches each side and offers a deal: wire $10 million to an offshore bank account, and we'll deliver any verdict you want.
This is a very clever plot twist, and politically sneaky as well. If Cusack and Weisz represent the young, middle-class, college-educated American voter in this parable (which I believe they do), then the $10 million offer seems to suggest that the young generation has become so jaded and cynical that it doesn't care about idealism anymore. (It's as if Generations X and Y looked at the shenanigans of America's ruling class and said, "You know what? If you jerks are only in it for the money, then so are we.") But the suggestion of cynicism is a narrative red herring. It turns out that these supposedly cynical, self-interested young folks are actually vengeful idealists. Many years ago, they both survived a Columbine-style shooting rampage, and at the subsequent trial, a gun manufacturer succeeded in buying the verdict it wanted (the town went bankrupt prosecuting the case), and the families' relatives didn't get a dime.
So all the intrigue is really about payback: The young couple and their town won a righteous victory legally?fair and square?and the moneyed elites stole it out from them. Years down the road, a very similar contest is taking place, and the younger generation has wised up and resolved to win no matter what?to skirt the edge of illegality and even go over the edge if necessary. Again, guns aren't the real issue here. The issue is the hijacking of America's political system, particularly Election 2000.
The Runaway Jury has been in production for at least a couple of years, but politically, its timing is dead-on. Following the disenfranchised liberal theory of electoral politics, the California recall is the latest installment in an ongoing series of ethically shady but very effective power grabs by the American right?a series that includes Election 2000 and Tom DeLay's premature gerrymander in Texas, which was intended to give the Lone Star state more Republican representation in Washington.
If you think I'm stretching, pay close attention during two scenes that involve Hoffman's character, Rohr, who represents the old-line Democratic establishment?the JFK-Vietnam generation of can't-we-all-get-along, mainstream liberals. In one key scene near the end, Rohr decides not to pay the $10 million because, unlike the other side, he'd rather lose honestly than win dishonestly (as self-serving liberal fantasies go, this one's better than anything on The West Wing). In the other crucial scene, Rohr and Fitch square off in a courtroom lavatory; in essence, Rohr attacks Fitch for his rejection of principles, and Fitch admits that he never had any principles. This jury consultant?the movie's representative of the Republican establishment's hired guns?cares only about winning. He sees juries (i.e., the voting public) as sheep that can easily be manipulated if one appeals to their deepest, crudest, least rational instincts. In short: right-wing bad, left-wing good.
According to the subtext of Runaway Jury, America is not as conservative as conservatives like to pretend; when the system is left alone, voters embrace moderate to liberal values. Conservatives cannot win honestly, so they must cheat. The runaway jurors of the title aren't hijacking the system. Stealing back something that was stolen from you isn't a crime. It's justice.
Who says political filmmaking is dead?