Watch \"A Time to Kill\"

¶ … watch "A Time to Kill"

Everyone should go to see a Time to Kill. This movie has a powerful message for today's society about justice and overcoming racial and legal barriers to justice. In the film, which is based on a Grisham novel, two redneck men rape a black child. When it appears that they are going to be found innocent, the girl's father Carl Lee (played by Samuel L. Jackson) guns down the two men in the courtroom. His young white lawyer, Jake, must try to defend him, which is hardly an easy task in the heart of Mississippi. The case becomes much more difficult when the K.K.K. begins to harass Jake in a vain attempt to convince him to give up the case. The plant burning crosses on his lawn and even try shooting at him. Before the end Jake has to send his wife and young daughter out of town to protect them from the racist riots that overwhelm Canton Mississippi. In the end, Jake gives a moving speech to the jury which truly makes the movie worth watching. The film is tightly plotted and strongly acted. This is probably one of the best Grisham films ever produced. There are five important reasons why everyone should see this film: because it is emotionally powerful and a deeply moving film, because ethically it is important to see films which challenge social norms, because the film is so intelligently thought out that it will be educational in addition to entertaining, and because it is a blockbuster hit which many other people have seen and therefore must be worthwhile, and because if one doesn't watch this film one is likely to be stuck with out films in the same genre and rating category which are far less good.

This movie is very deeply moving, and not just because of the technology by which film gives the illusion of motion. It is an emotionally powerful movie, geared to make people cry and fear for the lives of their loved ones. Who could resist being moved to tears and fears by the idea of a little ten-year-old girl being raped by sadistic rednecks? The emotion and sweat laden speeches given by Carl Lee and Jake will make the trip out to the video store well worth the mileage, despite the recent high costs of gas. As if the emotional charge of the story weren't high enough, it also stars Sandra Bullock in the role of a fragile and feisty young lawyer who helps take on the case, and between her jurisprudent moments spends her time cavorting like a pin-up. If Carl Lee's palpable grief at the treatment of his daughter doesn't make one emotionally vulnerable, then the flamboyant Sandra Bullock's legs and her lips will certainly move at least the men in the audience to emotional outbursts.

Time to Kill is also worth seeing because -- in additional to being a hot story of thwarted love affairs and successful revenge -- it is also so intelligently thought out that it might be quite educational. Logically, one should wish to see this movie because of its sophisticated critique of the way the American justice system may be inefficient in some cases and prejudicial in others, will being generally insufficient to create true justice in all cases. Of course, the ending restores some sense of justice to the world which the beginning wants to erase. Even in one were to leave aside the ethical and emotional aspects of these lessons, it is important that one see this movie so that it can be used as an example in discussing the strengths and failings of the American system.

The ethical impact of this movie is relatively central to the work. The moral is not exactly straight forward. Of course the rednecks who did this terrible thing to a little girl deserved to die and her father did not deserve the death penalty for killing them. One moral is that rape and murder are both bad, but that crimes based on a sense of denied justice are more pure than those which are racist and sexist. Perhaps the most profound moral, though, is that racism and injustice in one area of life inevitably will lead to crime and destruction in others. Carl Lee would never have taken the law into his own hands, whether temporarily insane or not, if the law were doing a good job of taking affairs into its hands. If it were not for the ingrained racism of the culture that allowed white men to rape black children with impunity, there would have been no need for a black father to take his gun into the courtroom in revenge. Moreover, Carl Lee finds he cannot get a fair trial because of the intervention of racism. The KKK interferes with his due process to the best of their ability. This further highlights the moral that racism interferes with the smooth operation of justice, and in so doing creates crime and desolation around it.

Another reason to see this film is that it is obviously very good, because so many people have already gone to see it. One knows a film is a good work of populist art when it is capable of drawing a strong audience. This piece has had a very wide audience and was very popular. Thousands of films are produced each year which never get to be shown in theaters across the country or have such a large audience because they simply do not have high enough production standards. These movies don't warrant being released as Hollywood films or shown on the big screen in real theaters; they are merely released as "independent" films and show in tiny second rate facilities. Many other films appear to be good enough to make it to the big screen, only to flop when the audience realizes they are no good. A Time to Kill, however, is obviously a very good movie because it made the cut to be released to real first-run theaters and it was popular among movie going audiences there.