HIGH CRIMES
Successful San Francisco trial lawyer Ashley Judd is stunned to learn that her
adoring husband (Jim Caviezel, a soulful but rather large and violent puppy)
was once part of a Marine detail that massacred nine civilians in a tiny El
Salvador hamlet. Now Caviezel is charged with the mass murder, which he
maintains was done by his commanding officer. To help defend her husband, Judd
recruits rumpled Morgan Freeman, a lawyer who's said to be good with military
cases.
Slick and lachrymose, the film doesn't wallow in clichés, it high-fives
itself over them. Freeman has another of his plum parts (lovable recovering
alcoholic who falls off the wagon while chasing witnesses through sleaze).
Judd, a can-do babe in a power suit, morphs into a damsel in distress whenever
the film wants to be a heavy-handed thriller instead of a humdrum whodunit. Her
character miscarriages during the course of the film, by way of demonstrating
that High Crimes is also meant to be a "character study" about
"emotions." And Carl Franklin directs as if he were mentally interpolating
commercials every 10 minutes. At the Apple Valley,Entertainment, Flagship,
Opera House, Showcase, and Tri-Boro cinemas.
Issue Date: April 5 - 11, 2002
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