Director Joel Schumacher and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman seem incapable of emphasizing what's important and relegating the rest to secondary status. Unfortunately, all of this serves as nothing more than undeveloped sideshow. And will Lucien Wilbanks ( Donald Sutherland), Jake's former law professor, now disbarred, sober up to support his protege? Freddie Cobb ( Kiefer Sutherland), brother of one of the victims, is determined to scare Jake off the case by reactivating the Ku Klux Klan in the area.

So prosecutor Rufus Buckley ( Kevin Spacey in one of his dead-eyed evil performances) is using this high-profile case to help propel him to the governor's office. Grisham likes to throw in a lot of subplot sizzle. Learning that whites convicted of raping blacks can be out of jail in less than 10 years, Carl Lee takes justice into his own hands. Jackson in another elegant and self-possessed performance), a black mill worker who has committed a revenge murder.īefore hundreds of witnesses, he mowed down two young examples of hard-drinking, foul-mouthed, brutal, sick, redneck scum, arrested for having raped and nearly killed Carl Lee's 10-year-old daughter. In 'A Time to Kill,' young, inexperienced, white Mississippi lawyer Jake Brigance ( Vanity Fair cover boy Matthew McConaughey) takes on the defense of Carl Lee Hailey ( Samuel L. Oh yes, a trial or knowledge of the law will help win the day. He / she bravely turns to inner resources to survive.

The first book came before he discovered his sure-fire formula: An innocent finds him / herself wrongly and mortally threatened by bad guys and either the police or the FBI, usually both.

A time to kill novel