Just Cause (1995)

The novel by John Katzenbach becomes this legal thriller starring Sean Connery as Harvard Law School professor Paul Armstrong. A legal expert whose days of trying cases are long behind him, Armstrong is moved by a plea he receives from a Florida death row inmate, Bobby Earl (Blair Underwood). It seems that the educated, upstanding Earl has been railroaded by an overeager sheriff (Laurence Fishburne) zealously trying to solve the kidnapping and murder of a little girl. Once Armstrong arrives in Florida, he is able to locate the murder weapon and cast doubt on Earl's innocence, even identifying a much more likely culprit in the homicidal genius Blair Sullivan (Ed Harris). All is not as it seems in the case of Bobby Earl, however, and Armstrong is going to end up regretting his interest in the case. Ruby Dee, Kate Capshaw, and Ned Beatty costar in this film from producer-turned-director Arne Glimcher.

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Review By Karl Williams

 A promising opening is blown by increasingly moronic and derivative plot twists and characters in this legal thriller based on a novel by John Katzenbach. Sean Connery is winning in the sort of role that suits him best, a great lion of intellect and gravity (in this instance, a lawyer), at the peak of his profession and aware of it. With his bushy eyebrows arching with accusation and a gruff growl of a voice letting anyone in range know that his is an ego with which to be reckoned, Connery is terrific. Too bad that there's nothing else to recommend the film, a tired mess that collapses to its narrative knees by the end of act two, delivering a finale that's meant to feel "slam bang" but instead surprises only in its sheer obviousness. Add to that some creative choices that should get screenwriter Jeb Stuart and producer turned director Arnold Glimcher fined for artistic larceny. The two most serious of their offenses? First, wasting Ed Harris in a role cribbed from Donald Sutherland's character in Backdraft (1991), which was in turn stolen wholesale from the Hannibal Lecter character in the Thomas Harris novels that inspired Manhunter (1986) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Second, setting up an audience to believe in the first half hour or so of Just Cause (1995) that it's about to witness a probative character study, when in fact viewers are about to be served a mystery with all the depth of a Murder, She Wrote episode.