JUST CAUSE: Blu-ray (Warner 1995) Warner Home Video
Why do we all enjoy murder
mysteries now and then? Certainly, the act of killing itself is distasteful to
almost everyone, and furthermore, I think it’s fairly safe to assume we would
all rather not participate as the
victim in real life. Still, there’s no denying human bloodlust. Perhaps its
appeals to our sense of morality - to see the villain get punished in the end -
or to our intellect when exercising our own powers of deduction to solve the
crime before the protagonist. Whatever the satisfaction derived from the safety
of our theater seats, there’s little to deny mankind’s bottomless thirst for a
good thriller and Arne Glimcher’s Just
Cause (1995) remains a fairly clever way to satisfy that criminal element
lurking in all our minds.
The film is loosely based
on John Katzenbach’s novel of the same name. In reshaping the story,
screenwriters Jeb Stuart and Peter Stone have inexplicably transformed
Katzenbach’s hero from a probing investigative journalist into a liberal law
professor who does not believe in capital punishment. To what effect? I’m not
quite sure. Having read Katzenbach’s novel before seeing the film I have to
state that the character in both works just fine. There’s virtually no more or
no less dramatic tension gleaned in making this alteration. So, six of one/half
a dozen of the other, I suppose.
Our story opens at Harvard
where Paul Armstrong (Sean Connery) is giving an evening lecture to a packed
audience. After a thunderous ovation, Armstrong is cornered by Evangeline
Ferguson (Ruby Dee), the aged mother of death row inmate, Bobby Earl (Blair
Underwood) who is awaiting the electric chair after being convicted of the
brutal rape and murder of an underage white girl. Evangeline pleads with
Armstrong to reopen the case, insisting that her son has been framed by a
corrupt officer. At first Armstrong is exceedingly reluctant to pursue the
matter. He’s grown comfortable in academia and really isn’t interesting in
returning to his former profession. But the more he probes into the particulars,
the more intrigued he becomes. Bobby Earl was a Cornell student, a highly
intelligent, articulate and utterly charming boy with a very bright future when
everything suddenly seemed to go horribly wrong. The pieces don’t fit. But why?
So Paul agrees to do a
little digging on Earl’s behalf. Paul, his wife – retired prosecutor Laurie
Prentiss (Kate Capshaw) and their daughter, Katie (Scarlet Johansson) fly to
Florida. While Laurie and Katie treat the trip as a vacation, meeting up with
her father Phil (Kevin McCarthy) and mother Libby (Hope Lange), Paul hunkers
down over old police records and court documents. Very quickly he comes to butt
heads with Sheriff Tanny Brown (Laurence Fishburne) who harbours an almost
maniacal hatred of Bobby Earl. At every step in Paul’s investigation Tanny
‘encourages’ Paul to leave well enough alone. Regrettably, Tanny’s strong-armed
tactics have just the opposite effect and before long the two men are forced to
prepare for a long, hard battle of wills.
Paul confronts Bobby Earl
with his own confession and Earl tells him he was coerced by a racist cop. Earl
also claims to know who actually committed the crime; fellow inmate and serial
killer Blair Sullivan (Ed Harris) who has been bragging incessantly to his
jailhouse buddies about his prowess with a knife. Paul challenges Sullivan – a
real psychotic - who toys with him before divulging where he hid the bloody
weapon; inside a remote sewer deep in the swampy marshes. Paul goes to Tanny
and learns that no murder weapon was ever recovered during his investigation of
Bobby Earl.
Now the two men make haste into
the swamp and find the knife exactly where Sullivan said it would be. Paul also
learns that the girl who was murdered was a very close friend of Tanny’s own
daughter, Lena (Taral Hicks). Tanny
begins to suspect that his own personal investment in the case may have muddled
his deductive reasoning, though he still cannot rid himself of the gut feeling
that Bobby Earl is guilty. Nevertheless, as a result of these new findings Earl
gets a retrial and is acquitted on all charges. Believing he has righted an
injustice, Paul is surprised when he receives a call from Sullivan requesting
that he visit his parents who also live in the bayou. Apprehensively, Paul goes
to the secluded home, discovering it unkempt and dark. Paul forces his way into
the home where he makes the gruesome discovery of two rotting corpses with
their throats slit. Hurrying back to the prison with all speed Paul is
confronted by an even more unsettling realization; that he has been duped into
letting a murderer and a rapist go free.
It seems that Earl and
Sullivan have been working together to pull the wool over Paul’s eyes from the
beginning. In exchange for lying about his complicity in the young girl’s
murder, Sullivan – who has absolutely no chance for parole - made Earl promise
to murder the parents he always despised. The worst, however, is yet to come.
Having learned that Paul is married to the former prosecutor who had him
incarcerated on a rape charge long ago – one that resulted in his brutal
castration inside prison, Bobby Earl kidnaps Laurie and Katie from their hotel.
Paul alerts Tanny that he was right all along and together they rush to an
isolated shack deep in the Everglades where Tanny is certain Earl has taken
Paul’s wife and child.
Paul arrives first and
confronts Earl who tells him that the only reason he was contacted in the first
place was so that he could exact his revenge on Laurie. Earl blames her for the
loss of his Cornell scholarship and the ruination of his reputation. Paul bides
his time until Tanny arrives. Realizing he has been set up, Earl attempts to
murder Laurie and Katie. But Paul intervenes. The men wrestle and Earl is
thrown into the bayou, shot to death by Tanny before being eaten by a nearby
alligator.
Just
Cause is a
fairly engaging suspense movie – albeit with a few heavy-handed clichés
expertly feathered into its rather conventional plot. At this point in the
evolution of entertainment pretty much everything we see is clichéd to some
extent. The trick of the exercise is to make the menial magnificent. In film,
unlike literature or radio, this can be achieved in a lot of different ways. Just Cause has some spectacular
cinematography by Lajos Koltai that really manages to capture the oppressive,
humidity-saturated mildew and moss covered exteriors of the Florida bayous with
a palpably sweaty quality. The intensity of the characters race against time is
magnified by this visualization; stiflingly hot and dank.
It goes without saying that
Sean Connery and Laurence Fishburne are professionals. But there’s also an
interesting adversarial chemistry at play between these two – a sort of
antithetical take off from the oft’ overplayed buddy/buddy relationship or bonding
between men who are, in this case, mostly driven by polar opposite motivations.
Their confrontational ambitions act like heated foreplay before great sex –
tearing at one another’s deep seeded desires until each realizes they share a
common goal. Blair Underwood gives a chilling performance as the egotistical
serial killer who convincingly masks his true intentions with a sly grin and
too clever to be believed nonchalance that only begins to crumble in the last
act. Just Cause isn’t a seminal
thriller, but it is a very good one; highly enjoyable and most definitely worth
a second look on Blu-ray.
Warner Home Video gives us
a very nice 1080p bare bones transfer: very solid, strong colors and accurate
contrast levels. Fine detail is impressive, particularly in close ups. Curiously,
certain scenes are wanting in overall clarity. Take a look at chapter 3 where
Paul comes home to a house full of screaming kids. The color is weaker than in
either the scene that precedes or follows it, and fine details tends to
slightly blur – odd! Film grain is
accurately represented throughout. On the whole the image will not disappoint.
The audio gets a big upgrade from Warner’s previous DVD, in 5.1 DTS with a
genuine presence in music and effects. Good stuff. Too bad about the extras.
There are none. Bottom line: Recommended!
FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)
3
VIDEO/AUDIO
3.5
EXTRAS
0
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