An often contrived, but always solidly and ingeniously contrived, suspense thriller. There have been grumbles heard that its notice of the plights of the homeless and the handicapped and the Vietnam veteran (in this case, one and the same -- and on trial for murder to boot) is gratuitous or irrelevant or exploitative or something. Well, and what if it is? Aren't those just rude names for the generous and the extra and the shrewd and the something else? This sort of slantwise awareness of social conditions, as if out of the corner of the eye and without turning on them the full gaze of the social crusader, has long been one of the nicer fringe benefits of the contemporary thriller. To expect such a movie, if it is going to raise such subjects at all, to then talk about nothing else, is simply to ask it to stop being a thriller and to become a "problem picture" instead: the sort of movie in which the illusion of life tends to get chased off the stage in preference for only a podium and a megaphone, and in which the narrative is notoriously apt to go dead. The narrative here, to do with the murder trial of a man who just incidentally happens to be handicapped and homeless and a Vietnam veteran, remains very much alive and lively, and no small thanks to keeping the Big Subjects in the just-right doses. The main business of the evening, however, is jury-tampering. And although the topic on the face of it is quite novel, the treatment of it doesn't attempt to be at all definitive: that would only make another sort of "problem picture" anyway. To open a new can of worms oughtn't to compel the opener to take a complete census of its contents; it's enough to extract an individual member and watch it squirm awhile. And this member squirms most interestingly. With Cher, Dennis Quaid, Liam Neeson, and John Mahoney; directed by Peter Yates. (1987) — Duncan Shepherd
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