This was a mystery, crime, drama that was brilliantly done. The entire movie had the viewer headed in one direction only to do a 180 at the end.
Paul Armstrong (Sean Connery) was a retired lawyer who'd been solicited for his help to get a man off of deathrow. Bobby Earl (Blair Underwood) was convicted of killing a little white girl. He totally mutilated the body. Though there wasn't much evidence of his guilt, the good ol' police of Florida beat a confession out of him.
At that point, the cops of Florida looked like nothing more than racist pigs pinning a murder on an innocent Black man. And Detective Tanny Brown (Laurence Fishburne) looked like a tool of that racism.
Once Paul was able to get Bobby Earl freed--with the help of a serial killer named Blair Sullivan (Ed Harris)--we find that Bobby Earl was in fact guilty and he only used Paul to get free and go after his wife, Laurie (Kate Upshaw), who'd attempted to convict him of kidnapping years earlier.
What did this all boil down to? Sometimes police brutality is good and so is the death penalty. As good as the movie was, that was the disagreeable and pervasive message.
Detectives Brown and Wilcox (Christopher Murray) had beaten and threatened to kill Bobby Earl in order to coerce a confession--and they were right. They had a strong feeling that he was guilty even if they didn't have the evidence necessary. If police officers were able to act upon their finely tuned intuition, then we could lock up more bad guys. Just look at this case of Bobby Earl. He was locked up and headed to the electric chair if it weren't for the meddling of a bleeding-heart Yankee professor who was easily tricked. That was the message. And it fit for this movie.
To the credit of "Just Cause" it did juxtapose two different tales with one individual. When Bobby Earl was innocent, he'd been arrested and tortured due to a cop's jealousy. Then, when he was guilty he was also arrested and tortured, but this time due to a cop's desire to see a wicked man locked away. This movie was quite a doozy and I appreciated that.
Still, the stronger theme was: cops put bad guys away while dumb lawyers get them off. The unfortunate thing about movies like this is they help to support a gross notion that most cops have an excellent nose for bad guys and they should be allowed to get the bad guy at all costs. But I would contend that for every one Bobby Earl they net without proper evidence there are probably ten Anthony Ray Hintons (innocent man convicted of murder) who get locked up because of a myriad reasons: convenience, negligence, racism, etc.
"Just Cause" was a good movie, one of the very rare ones that I like even though I disagree with its message.
Paul Armstrong (Sean Connery) was a retired lawyer who'd been solicited for his help to get a man off of deathrow. Bobby Earl (Blair Underwood) was convicted of killing a little white girl. He totally mutilated the body. Though there wasn't much evidence of his guilt, the good ol' police of Florida beat a confession out of him.
At that point, the cops of Florida looked like nothing more than racist pigs pinning a murder on an innocent Black man. And Detective Tanny Brown (Laurence Fishburne) looked like a tool of that racism.
Once Paul was able to get Bobby Earl freed--with the help of a serial killer named Blair Sullivan (Ed Harris)--we find that Bobby Earl was in fact guilty and he only used Paul to get free and go after his wife, Laurie (Kate Upshaw), who'd attempted to convict him of kidnapping years earlier.
What did this all boil down to? Sometimes police brutality is good and so is the death penalty. As good as the movie was, that was the disagreeable and pervasive message.
Detectives Brown and Wilcox (Christopher Murray) had beaten and threatened to kill Bobby Earl in order to coerce a confession--and they were right. They had a strong feeling that he was guilty even if they didn't have the evidence necessary. If police officers were able to act upon their finely tuned intuition, then we could lock up more bad guys. Just look at this case of Bobby Earl. He was locked up and headed to the electric chair if it weren't for the meddling of a bleeding-heart Yankee professor who was easily tricked. That was the message. And it fit for this movie.
To the credit of "Just Cause" it did juxtapose two different tales with one individual. When Bobby Earl was innocent, he'd been arrested and tortured due to a cop's jealousy. Then, when he was guilty he was also arrested and tortured, but this time due to a cop's desire to see a wicked man locked away. This movie was quite a doozy and I appreciated that.
Still, the stronger theme was: cops put bad guys away while dumb lawyers get them off. The unfortunate thing about movies like this is they help to support a gross notion that most cops have an excellent nose for bad guys and they should be allowed to get the bad guy at all costs. But I would contend that for every one Bobby Earl they net without proper evidence there are probably ten Anthony Ray Hintons (innocent man convicted of murder) who get locked up because of a myriad reasons: convenience, negligence, racism, etc.
"Just Cause" was a good movie, one of the very rare ones that I like even though I disagree with its message.