From page to screen with formula ease

I’ve never been a big John Grisham fan. Sure, he’s a decent storyteller. And his first few books and the movies made from them — “The Firm,” “The Pelican Brief,” “The Client,” “The Rainmaker” — are fast moving, exciting and peopled with characters that, while fleshed only a little more deeply than “Spongebob Squarepants” is, are worth caring about. But since then he’s been churning out one novel after the next, and all of them carry the same tired individual-against-a-corrupt-system formula.

And that’s exactly how to describe “The Runaway Jury,” which Grisham wrote seven years ago but is out just now as a movie. I like John Cusack, am always glad to see Rachel Weisz , think Gene Hackman goes over the top in virtually every scene, am intrigued at how Dustin Hoffman’s southern accent comes and goes, wonder what Jeremy Piven is even doing in this film and can’t for the life of me forget that Bruce McGill once played Daniel Simpson Day — better known as the blowtorch-bearing “D-Day” — in “Animal House.” As for the plot, it had something to do with guns and stuff, right?