Rating: 
Summary: Bought Jury
Review: If you enjoy movies like "Class Action", "12 Angry Men", "The Juror", or "The Pelican Brief" you should love this one. As a big fan of Grisham I did. The cast is perfect. I was impressed by John Cusack's, Rachel Weisz's, Gene Hackman's, and Dustin Hoffman's portrayals. Good sets, music, and director make it all the better. This case involving a lawsuit against a gun manufacturer may arouse Charlton Heston and pro NRA people up in arms, but it's the manipulation of the jury that is the real story. Granted the book was about tobacco not firearms, but the tobacco industry has been beaten to death so they wanted a new horse to beat senseless. I agree with firearm advocates they took alot of license in trying to make people feel firearms should be outlawed, but I did like the story about paid groups studying juries to predict or influence their vote. We watch as the jurors are carefully studied for secrets that may make them willing to change their verdict. Hackman, Cusack, and Weisz are the key figures. All the rest the cast does a good job in their supporting roles.Although we don't see a great deal of the jury interaction, we see enough to get a good feel of the jurors sentiments and their secrets. This is one I will add to my listmania of Great Courtroom Movies and personal DVD collection. It is ashame that this movie was not appreciated as much because it used a gun manufacturer in a class action suit. Perhaps if they had chosen another manufacturer that causes death it may have received more positive attention. What impresses me most about this movie when I reflect on it is how they show jurors being profiled. We have let lawyers badger us blue about profiling their clients, but it is perfectly acceptable for them to profile jurors. If you have ever been on jury duty you know only to well how this movie does not go to far beyond what is true about profiling jurors. Especially in any precedent setting case.
Rating: 
Summary: A fine show that needed a better view.
Review: I did not get offended with the whole gun debate raised in this movie. I actually enjoyed the way it was handle in some respect, but the movie needed more of a kick to really grab me into it and needed to give a better platform to its actors. I love Gene Hackman as an actor, and I thought that he did well in his part, and Dustin Hoffman gave him a really good adversary. I liked Rachel Weisz a lot as an actress, and she really gave one heck of a performance. I think she actually stole the movie from everybody with what she did, that how good I think she was. And John Cusack was as cool as ever. I just wish that the movie were as good as their performances.
Rating: 
Summary: See it for Hackman and Weisz, other than that don¿t bother
Review: Dumb, and contrived caper that insults the viewer in every level with it's unbelievable clutches, and it's preaching to the choir views on guns which in a way makes not sense considering that the movie is more about jury tampering than guns in the first place. Gene Hackman and Rachel Weisz do a great job considering that the script was written by about three or four people and they make you care about their characters. A hard thing to do considering that you really don't care after a while about what is happening on screen. I usually don't agree with the majority but I really do in this case. See it for the good effort made by Gene Hackman and Rachel Weisz for at least doing their best to keep you interest in the movie. If you don't want to, I suggest renting much better movies by them and skip this movie out right, because it's really not worth your time.
Rating: 
Summary: justice is not so blind
Review: Set in the redolent atmosphere of New Orleans, the case of a widow's compensation from the gun industry for her husband's shooting death two years' prior is coming to court. Nicholas Easter is called for jury duty -- it turns out that there is a sophisticated operation tracking potential jurors, surveying them, and assessing who will determine the best verdict for their client. In the same vein, an independent operator named Marlee is selling the verdict to the highest bidder. But no one really knows what her interest in this case is about .... With Nicholas as her insider, he is sympathetic to all the jurors, winning them over and thus swaying them as needed .... Will justice prevail? What IS justice when you don't have all the facts in front of you? This is a hair-raising Grisham drama, with some violent scenes. Excellent film overall.
Rating:
Summary: don't be turned off by the "gun messages"
Review: I already reviewed this movie, but wanted to just post this follow up after reading some of the other reviews: A lot of people would be turned because they would see the film as only an anti-gun message. However, in this case, it seems to fit. Like one question the prosecutor asks of the gun manufacturer "You're advertisement for this gun says it has a print resistant finish". The gun guy says, yes, it resists finger prints cause finger prints are mostly water and water will rust the surface. So the prosecutor says "well, then why didn't you say it was a rust-resistant finish"? Gets back to the whole arguement that the only people needing a print-resistant finish are criminals. Little things like that. They talk to some store salesman, who sold hundreds of these guns to the SAME GUY and never asked him any questions. It'd be like, if every month, I walked into a gun store and bought 25 beretta's and nobody asking me what the heck I was doing with all the guns. I mean, isn't it WIERD to have somebody buy 25 of the SAME gun every month, month after month? It turns out the guy was buying them legally, then turning right around and selling them illegally for like 3 times the price or something like that. All these "businessmen" knowingly looked the other way when they darn well knew some illegal stuff was going on. One of the jurors makes the case "so what next? sure fast food cause you're fat?" (ironic huh?). Anyways, I'm against the overall pursuit of the gun manufactures for their product alone. Just like you shouldn't sue Absolute, or Coors, when you drink too much and crash your car. Just like you can't sure the car company for selling a car to a drunk driver. I don't think, generally speaking, that the gun manufactures should be sued. People need to take responsibility for their own actions and QUIT TRYING TO BLAME EVERYBODY ELSE BUT THEIRSELF! My point is, even if you don't like guns, or even if you do like guns, the evidence in THIS ONE PARTICULAR movie, makes that ONE PARTICULAR gun manufacturer look like they were knowingly breaking the law. So, rent it, and enjoy it. And then discuss it amongst yourselfs. Then write a review :)
Rating:
Summary: Very good.
Review: I saw "runaway jury" over the weekend. You should probably check this one out. It's pretty good. It's got john cusak and dustin hoffman, and gene hackman in it. Basically, a lady is suing a gun manufacture because her husband got killed, and dustin hoffman is the prosecuting DA, gene hackman works for the defense, and john cusak is a juror. Gene hackman is like an expert at picking jurors, and tries to dig up dirt on jurors to swing the verdict his way. John Cusak is on the jury and tells both the prosecution and defense that he will swing the jury to whoever pays him the most money. So, the whole story is about the trial, and how everybody is trying to swing the jury their way. It's real interesting story, there are a couple of "twists" in the story that you really don't see comming, but do fit with the rest of the story so they're not "no-ways". The ending is pretty good also as everything kind of comes together and finally makes sense. It's a drama, with a little bit of action and also some light humor.
Rating:
Summary: Good movie.. if you haven't read the book
Review: Set in New Orleans, this is the story of a mysterious man, Nick Easter (John Cusack) who gets himself on the jury of a landmark case against a gun manufacturer in an attempt to influence the other jury members to vote a certain way. Meanwhile, Easter's girlfriend, Marlee (Rachel Weisz), tries to swindle the attorneys (Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman) to pay millions of dollars to have the jury return a verdict friendly to their clients. The case involves the widow of a man killed in an office shooting suing the gun manufacturer of the weapon that was used, under the claim that they knew the store that sold it was not obeying the laws about firearm sales.
When I heard that Runaway Jury was going to be made into a movie, I was thrilled. Then I heard that the story line was going to be based on guns instead of the tobacco industry. I found myself constantly comparing the book versus the movie the entire time. It was a decent movie but not what I expect at all. The book kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time while the movie just barely kept me interested.
Rating:
Summary: I feel very sorry for the actors in this mess of a movie.
Review: Its very heartbreaking to see such great actors involved in such a mess of a film. The editing is a major down fall as well as the directing, which should have been pull off better. Do not get me started about the script because there is really not one to talk about. All the actors involve do their best with what is there but they should have been giving more to do than what was giving. Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman and Rachel Weisz all give great performance but they are left holding the bag by the filmmaker's own mistakes. John Cusack is ok and the rest of the cast is all right but without something for all them to do, they are no more than graph on a page. The story was the movie's down fall, and with out a good story, there is really nothing to hold anybody's interest. What a real shame because Hackman, Weisz, and Hoffman do very good work here, and they should have gotten a better script than what they had.
Rating:
Summary: A good story subverted by ham-fisted propagandizing
Review: Director Gary Fleder has previously made several mediocre Hollywood thrillers that incidentally glamorize violence. Now he turns one of John Grisham's best novels--an intricately-plotted thriller about jury-tampering in a tobacco trial--into a mediocre Hollywood thriller that shamelessly propagandizes for the gun control lobby. Has he suddenly grown some sort of conscience? Or tumbled into the sack with Sarah Brady, or Ed Asner, or ...? It's too bad this production got carried away with preaching to the converted, for it sabotages Grisham's splendid story and a first-rate cast for the sake of it's ham-fisted anti-gun political agenda. Gene Hackman is excellent (as usual) as the professional jury-rigger. John Cusak and Rachel Weisz are nearly as good as his amateur nemeses. Unfortunately, Dustin Hoffman demonstrates again that his best days are far behind him with another competent but uninspired performance. (What's with that accent?) And a strong supporting cast (including Bruce Davison, Nora Dunn, Bruce McGill, & Jeremy Piven) is mostly wasted in this misguided adaptation. Even so, their good performances and first-rate production values make this movie moderately entertaining, as long as you don't expect fidelity to Grisham's story--or unless the absurdly one-sided propagandizing strains your credulity beyond the breaking point.
Rating:
Summary: Wasted of Time Because of the story, not the cast.
Review: Bad and incoherent John Grisham rip off than kills the senses with its bad and righteous view of guns in America. The acting is good with Rachel Weisz and Gene Hackman stealing the show from the rest of the cast with great and special nods going to Dustin Hoffman, and John Cusack. No much of a movie here but because of Weisz, Hackman and the rest of the cast, it's passable.
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