Rating: 
Summary: The Best Grisham Book-Film
Review: From "The Client" to the "The Chamber" to "Rainmaker" to "The Pelican Brief" John Grisham has amazed audiences with his political high-paced stories. This is no exception, except for one. The movie could possibly be better than the book.
In an all-star cast Matthew McConaughey, Samuel L. Jackson, Kevin Spacey, Sandra Bullock, both Keifer and Donald Sutherland, Oliver Platt, and Ashley Judd star.
The plot is quite simple. A 10-year old black girl is raped by two drunk crusty skeezy white men and her father (Jackson) vengefully takes the law into his own before they can be tried.
A hot-shot white lawyer (McConaughey) takes on the case with help of his hilarious friend (Platt) age-old mentor (Sutherland, Donald) and "oh-so-hot" law clerk (Bullock). We can all imagine what will happen when a white man defends a black man for the murder of two white men in Canton, Mississippi.
Immense drama begins when the prosecutor (Spacey) enters the film. A re-rise of the KKK (headed by Sutherland, Keifer) many violent attacks, and gut-wrenching monologues, including an Oscar worthy performance by McConaughey and Jackson make this one of the best and underrated films of the year.
Rating:
Summary: GOOD BOOK! BETTER MOVIE!
Review: This movie was extraordinary! Jake brigance is palyed so well by mcconaughey you'ed think that brigance was his brother. The movie followed the book very well and only one minor part was cut out and only two changed. The changes made the movie better. This movie had all the right actors. While i watched this i was to scared i might miss somthing that i couldn't leave my seat. Plus this is one of the few grisham books that have a good ending. All in all this movie had great actors and was based on an excelant book.
Rating: 
Summary: No features, must be flipped half way through
Review: The movie itself is outstanding. The DVD package is awful.There are no special features to speak of. There is a miniscule "cast bio" section that covers only the main players, in a film full of "where have I seen him before" stellar performances. Oh, there is also the theatrical trailer (1 version). Worse, this disc is a flipper. That means that you have to get up half way through the movie and flip the darn disc over. If you own a 400 disc changer (like one of the Sony's) you almost have to buy two copies in order to avoid rotating the whole cylinder every time to flip the movie. I have no idea why this move has to be a flipper. There just isn't that much information here. It should all fit. Amazingly, there was enough room to include the "special features" - cast bio, theatrical trailer, and "buy these other movies" on BOTH sides of the disc. Garbage like this gives DVD a bad name. Stick w/ VHS for this flick.
Rating:
Summary: A worthy subject brought down by a shameless script
Review: An enraged father takes the law into his own hands when two thugs brutalize his daughter. Quickly arrested, the two thugs and their guard are cut down by the raging patriarch. A clear case of parental rage you might say, but this is Hollywood - the father is black, the thugs are drunken rednecks with beer bellies and accents to match, and the resulting murder occurs in the sort of small, backwater southern town visited in countless episodes of "Quantum Leap" - so the real issue must be race. Now imprisoned, dad Carl Lee (Samuel L. Jackson) turns to a young white lawyer, Jake Tyler Brigance (Matt Mccaugnahey) for help. (Brigance is familiar in the town's black community, but Lee prime motivation is his utter whiteness - "you're one of them" the all-but condemned father declares near the end of the film). With his small firm, Brigance prepares what should be a winning defense (the act itself is pretty much indisputable, but legal insanity at a time under Lee's stress of learning of his daughter's victimization is inexplicably depicted as an impossible goal). On his side, Brigance has Lucien Wilbanks (Donald Sutherland), a once prominent liberal lawyer now disbarred but still sage; Harry Rex Vonner (Oliver Platt) as Brigance's associate, who is meant to be acceptably oily as well as playing the devil's advocate role played by Kevin Pollack in the far superior "A Few Good Men"; rounding out the team is Ellen Roark, (Sandra Bullock) a rich law student who descends out of town offering Brigance free legal advice and boundless reserve, money and temptation. Against him is an utterly sleezy prosecutor (Kevin Spacey), a jury that has already decided the case, a resurgent cadre of KKK and a judge who isn't so much prejudicial as he is ominous because he's played by Patrick Mcgoohan and has the last name "Noose". (I guess "Judge Syringe" would have been too obvious). This movie is utterly shameless. Some might just call it PC, but "A Time" is bad because it is compulsively superior, taking not racial injustice as its impetus, but instead relying on pure self-righteousness. Brigance and Lee stand alone among self-serving opportunists, and not all of whom are on the prosecution's side (witness a band of aging civil-rights activists descending on the town with the hope of rekindling their cause with Lee's almost certain martyrdom). The script takes no chances at objectivity with Brigance's actual enemies. Spacey's prosecutor is utterly amoral - his strategy rests largely on a choice of trial venue guaranteed to create a jury whiter than soap, while using a technicality to discredit one of Brigance's witnesses; outside of court, Spacey's other big scene has him tossing out suggestive come-ons to Sandra Bullock (just so she can put him down, and good). Kiefer Southerland is utterly one-dimensional as the brother of one of Lee's victims, who brings the Klan back to their small town. Everything about the film is contrived, especially the issue of race. Are wupposed to think that Lee would have acted differently were he and his daughter's attackers of the same color? It's a nonsensical prospect, but the script cravenly brings the KKK into the picture so that they and not the film's heroes can make the critical decision - if a bunch of torch-carrying redneck rubes in sheets thinks that this is a racial matter, who are we to dispute, right? Certainly, no white scriptwriters would have the bravery to set a polemic on racial injustice in Boston or south-central LA. What's worse is how a script that laments the suffering of the innocent actually discards characters like beer cans - Lee's daughter is practically a non-presence, Brigance's legal allies remain limited to discrete legal roles, even the poor court officer who gets cut down by accident during Lee's strike of vengeance - none rise from the background once the script has used them once. It's no surprise that this shallow film comes with a shallow end - with their town in ashes, after the deaths and the protests, and Lee's daughter (now invisible to the script) essentially scarred for life - the heroes gather at what looks to be a cookout. Films like "Independence Day" are escapist fun - this flick crossed the line into sci-fi.
Rating:
Summary: Not to be missed!
Review: I recently rented "A Time To Kill" simply for the reason to cure boredom. It worked. I found myself riveted to the intense drama for the entire period of the movie. The acting is superb. Whomever chose the actors is the casting god in my mind. Matthew McConaughey shines in the starring role. His emotions jump out at you and grab a hold of your heart. His final monologue in the courtroom is the best movie moment that I have ever witnessed. Don't even bother to hold back your feelings for an attempt is a feeble one. The plot is inventive and addictive. Each twist and turn drags you deeper into the story. I found myself sitting in the courtroom with the characters as if I was actually in the story myself, and not at home on the couch. "A Time To Kill" is the best movie I have ever seen. I predict that this film will become a classic. How could it not? The story is excellent, the characters, fantastic, the emotions that the viewer feel are to real to let this movie sink into oblivion.
Rating: 
Summary: Time to Kill the Flipper
Review: This a fantastic movie. The adaptation from the book is one of the best from Grisham's novels. But this DVD edition is a Flipper. Some day the DVD companies will realize that DVD collectors don't want to have to get up and flip the disc over in order to watch the second half of the film. I'll stick to VHS on this one.
Rating:
Summary: Dod-Durned Terrible!
Review: God, what a waste of time. Hollow, patronizing performances, a completely overblown plot and melodrama so sappy you'll have holes in your teeth. Don't believe the hype--avoid like a cancer.
Rating:
Summary: Grisham Rules
Review: When the film makers arrived in the colorful little town of Canton, Mississippi, black people and white people were proud of the attention their town was receiving. They eagerly rushed forward to find roles in the movie. These people were big enough to expose their own smallness of their souls. The irony of Southern character is difficult for people, including Southerners themselves, to comprehand. A TIME TO KILL fascinates me, as I have lived in Madison County and gone to Wardell's Restaurant on the square behind the courthouse on many Saturday nights to eat fried oysters, because the setting, although not entirely authentic, captures the essence of Canton, Mississippi, a town usually peaceful except when the undercurrents overflow. To others it may seem a myth that there really are and have been good Southern men and women, white and black, who cared for and about each other. John Grisham is not trying to make a statement about all the facets of the history of Southern racism in this first yarn he has spun. Instead, I believe his primary goal is to entertain us. The only hard fast theme that we can pin on him is that there is a time for vigilante action. I agree with other reviewers that the arguments of the lawyers are senseless, but if they had been sensible, they would have been neither legalistic nor Southern. The fact that the movie has stirred so many strong emotions for and against it speaks of its greatness. Even though the actors exaggerated their speech, they made me laugh at them and at myself. Maybe we Southerners do still sound that way. Mr. Brigance reminds me of the smooth Greeks I knew back in college. The subtle slattern moves of the mature secretary say volumes about Southern women. After staying up all last night watching this masterpiece, I can't stay up all night tonight writing about it.Just watch it because you can't afford to miss it.Jane Riley, author of SOLOMON'S PORCH, THE STORY OF BEN AND ROSE.
Rating:
Summary: A Time to Kill
Review: This is an excellent film..When a young black girl is brutally raped by a white man in the south, her father feels that he needs to take justice into his own hands and kills the rapist in the courthouse...This starts a whole chain of events in the town Blacks against Whites..It seemed like people couldn't get passed that the little girl was black so they just didn't care..but when the lawyer says pretend she was white thats when everyone starts thinkin...
Rating:
Summary: Excellent film. :)
Review: I became a Matthew McConaughey fan kind of late, in that the first film I saw him in was The Wedding Planner with Jennifer Lopez. But shortly after (as he really stuck with me after that), I purchased A Time To Kill on DVD. WOW. The guy is a natural. And I think his performance in A Time To Kill proves it. I was blown away by this film. It was just so powerful, and ended up having a huge impact on me. Great cast. :) I highly recommend this to all who haven't yet seen it. Definitely worth the money to buy.
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