High Crimes (2002)
Review by HTQ4
Film:
DVD:

Written by Yuri Zeltser and Cary Bickley, based on the novel by Joseph Finder
Directed by Carl Franklin
Starring Ashley Judd, Morgan Freeman, James Caviezel, Adam Scott and Amanda Peet

Features:

• Full-length Audio Commentary by Director Carl Franklin
  
• 6 Featurettes
  

My Advice: Skip it

Claire Kubik (Judd) and her husband Tom (Caviezel) have the almost perfect life; she is an up and coming attorney, he is an ex-Marine that has taken up carpentry, and they are trying to have a baby. Things are running along pretty well for them until he is suddenly apprehended by the FBI for a crime committed while he was a Marine. He claims he's innocent, so she leaves her practice to defend him in his court-martial. Since she knows very little of military law, she seeks out the talents of a former Marine Corps attorney, Charlie Grimes (Freeman) who, as it turns out, is a recovering alcoholic. Not only that, but she is closer to uncovering a government conspiracy in the process.

I'm going to try to be as kind as I can, given the genre that this film falls into, but I have to say that this movie felt like its screenplay was cut off the back of a cereal box...and then it has its own particular flaws. First of all, it's way too long. And I don't mean it took a great deal of time out of my life to watch it. What I mean is it takes too long to develop anything. The plot gets moving fast enough, but then it seems to stall out trying to figure out where the climax should be. Judd is everything she is supposed to be at the right moments, but overall character through-line seems to be a bit of a problem for her here. Freeman nails his through-line, but is not given enough in the script to really stand out in this film. The alcoholism, which could have been a real conflict in the story, is instead glossed over and merely mentioned. He starts out clean, gets drunk again, then sobers up because Judd gives him a talking-to...just not enough to bring tears to the eyes (unless they are from boredom--so much for being kind). The rest of the cast is rounded out with actors who seem to be satisfied with playing the stereotype of being in the military rather than really getting into their (human) characters.

Special features are decent in this presentation. There are six featurettes that go seem to dig a little deeper with the research than the screenwriters did while adapting the book into the movie. There are sections on the differences between military and civilian court systems and the training that some covert operations soldiers get on how to "beat" a polygraph machine, which are all pretty cool. They're snippets of interviews with some talking heads that seem to know what they are talking about. Then you have the featurette that goes into detail about Judd and Freeman having worked together before (Kiss the Girls) and how nice it was for them to be back in front of the camera together again...which I could really care less about. These type of featurettes really bug me. I know they worked together before, and even if I didn't, I could find out that information myself. However, all they are going to do is talk about how amazing it is to work with the other and how much they learned from them...all in all, pretty boring stuff.

Then there's the audio commentary by Director Franklin, which really just boils down to him telling us which pieces of the incidental music came from his own personal music collection and some little tidbits about how he always casts his wife in cameo roles in all of his films. Obviously, that's not all he talks about, but he spends more time on stuff like this than he does about the film; which tells me one of two things is true: Either he didn't really do much research about the film (the clue here is that he only read the novel twice before he began shooting) or he was having such a good time talking about the "fun" stuff that he just wasn't thinking about talking about the movie. If you feel like it, check it out and give me your opinion on this over in the Gabfest. I don't think he put a lot of time into prepping for this movie.

The movie itself might be worth checking out if you are an Ashley Judd or Morgan Freeman fan, just be forewarned: this is not their finest work. With that in mind, I suggest this one stay on the shelf at your local rental store.