Justice Theme Lost Amid ‘Kill’ Theatrics

The key moment in the manipulative, pushy “A Time to Kill” is a tiny one. Kiefer Sutherland, playing a psycho (like he ever plays anything else), is fixin’ to take a potshot at our hero when the camera zooms in to show us the dirt carefully shoved under Sutherland’s fingernails by a makeup person with too much time on her hands.

More bad signs: The actors all fit too neatly into their roles (even worse than Sutherland is Anthony Heald, the creep Anthony Hopkins was about to consume at the end of “Silence of the Lambs,” as another smug psychiatrist). Sandra Bullock has to play a scene in which she rouses herself from a coma to deliver a pep talk to Matthew McConaughey. And the judge is named Judge Noose.

The storytelling is too black and white. We are asked to agree with everything our heroes do and hiss at everything the bad ‘uns do. To be fair, I should mention that I have a big ol’ problem with the premise of “A Time to Kill.” Samuel L. Jackson plays a man who kills two dirt-eating sons of the Confederacy who raped his young daughter. McConaughey is his attorney, who asks the jury to free Jackson because, essentially, he was a concerned father acting on impulse.

That’s right. “A Time to Kill” actually endorses vigilante justice, and it cynically assumes that the jury system can’t work. It asks us to agree that it’s OK for juries to ignore evidence and to use trials to “send a message” (you can’t help wondering what “A Time to Kill” author John Grisham thought about the jury that “sent a message” to O.J.).

It’s a big story - the theme is whether blacks and whites can ever get along - and director Joel Schumacher is not the man for the job. Schumacher (“Batman Forever”) is good at pulpy hoo-ha, but he’s too faithful to the Grisham source material, including characters who add nothing to the story (if you know what Brenda Fricker or M. Emmet Walsh are doing here, I’d love to hear from you), as well as pretty images like the beautiful rainstorm that upstages the emotional climax.

That climax should have come from the superb, underused Jackson. Less impressive is the heavily hyped McConaughey, who looks like Woody Harrelson’s supermodel younger brother and whose summation to the jury features the kind of quivery-lipped emoting not seen since Ali MacGraw’s heyday.

It’s not all his fault, though. MacGraw never had to play a scene like the unintentionally funny one in which McConaughey pathetically calls for a dog we know is dead. Or do we?

As if all the lip-quivering and red-necking weren’t heavy-handed enough, the movie lifts some awful jury deliberation scenes from Grisham’s current book, “The Runaway Jury,” further stacking the deck against our short-handed hero. But what’s really pathetic about “A Time to Kill” is that it’s so busy cooking up phony theatrics that it never asks the question implied by its title: Is there every a time to kill?

MEMO: These 2 sidebars appeared with the story:

1. “A Time to Kill” Location: East Sprague, Newport and Showboat cinemas Credits: Directed by, Joel Schumacher, starring Matthew McConaughey, Samuel L. Jackson Running time: 2:25 Rating: R

2. OTHER VIEWS Here’s what other critics say about “A Time to Kill:” Bob Fenster/The Arizona Republic: While the movie is a stirring courtroom drama, the story’s real strength comes in its expose of the destructive power of racism to divide America into enemy camps. Jay Carr/The Boston Globe: “A Time to Kill” is easily the best of the four movies based on John Grisham’s novels, and it’s one of the year’s best, too. Filled with more moral passion than all the other Grisham movies put together, it’s the one that seems closest to the author’s heart. Amy Dawes/Los Angeles Daily News: Elevated by a trio of great performances, including the dazzling arrival into movie stardom of striking Texas-born actor Matthew McConaughey, “A Time to Kill” blends potent entertainment and gripping emotional issues in one of this summer’s must-see movies. Philip Wuntch/Dallas Morning News: “A Time to Kill” is the best film version of a Grisham novel, a cinematic page-turner that never seems as long as its 145-minute duration. Jay Boyar/Orlando Sentinel: “A Time to Kill” is the sort of movie whose themes would have seemed bold and controversial if it had come out three or four decades ago. Douglas J. Rowe/Associated Press: The hype stops here. And no, it’s not just because he’s beautiful. It’s mainly because Matthew McConaughey, who has been touted as Paul Newman and Marlon Brando rolled into one, is not. That’s glaringly apparent in the new film “A Time to Kill.”