HIGH CRIMES

Starring: Ashley Judd, Morgan Freeman, Jim Caviezel, Adam Scott, Amanda Peet and Bruce Davison
Director: Carl Franklin
Running Time: 115 mins
Certificate: 12A

Claire Kubik's (Judd) life was perfect. She was about to become a partner at her law firm, has a beautiful home and was trying for a baby with her loving husband Tom (Caviezel). This all changes when the FBI ambushes the couple and Tom is arrested. Claire then finds out that the man she married has a hidden past. He is a marine deserter who has been on the run since 1988 and the military want to put him on trial for the murder of nine civilians, including women and children, in El Salvador.

The courtroom drama is becoming a very stagnant genre. Predictability and the over use of plot twists has removed any sense of originality from this type of the movie and High Crimes is a prime example.

While the casting of Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd, together again after appearing in Kiss the Girls in 1998, is excellent as they are both very talented actors and used to the genre, the story is not good enough to bring the best out of their combined acting abilities. The support is underused as well, with Bruce Davison hardly having any screen time, Amanda Peet's character is just annoyingly stereotypical as the bad seed of Claire's family and Jim Caviezel is seriously miscast as the accused husband. Only Adam Scott as the rookie military lawyer gains any creditability. You can't blame the actors however, as they are hindered by the lacklustre plot.

The editing on the movie is also extremely poor. You don't really know the time frame the film is set over but injures sustained by both Judd's and Freeman's characters heal extremely fast and Morgan Freeman's facial and head cuts and bruises come and go in different scenes.

High Crimes does absolutely nothing new with the courtroom drama scenario. Predictability exudes itself throughout the movie and you end up thinking that with this cast the filmmakers had a chance to inject some originality to a very tired genre.

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