Double Jeopardy

What is it about the Best Supporting Actor Oscar that paralyzes a career? On the heels of Cuba Gooding Jr.'s embarrassment in Chill Factor comes Tommy Lee Jones's feeble The Fugitive retread. Actually, Jones's role is almost a footnote in this tale of naive, spoiled housewife and mother Libby Parsons (Ashley Judd), whose husband (Bruce Greenwood) -- you can tell he's a slippery one because he admires the art of Arshile Gorky -- vanishes at sea. Convicted on circumstantial evidence that would bring tears to Johnnie Cochran's eyes, Libby does her time and comes out primed to for revenge.

Enter Jones as parole officer Travis Lehman, a gin-soaked shadow of his Oscar-winning, fugitive-chasing U.S. Marshals self, but still doggedly determined to bring Libby to justice -- or vice versa. Preposterous and dull, Jeopardy seems to have been taken up by director Bruce Beresford as an opportunity for shooting arty local color in New Orleans. The title, of course, refers to the illegality of trying someone twice for the same crime. Now that he's in his third run-through of the same material, that statute of limitations has expired for Tommy Lee. At the Harbour Mall, Showcase, Starcase, Tri-Boro, and Woonsocket cinemas.
-- Peter Keough