Analysis Of A Time To Kill

2 Pages 424 Words

The movie A Time to Kill, directed by Joel Schumacher, is about a ten-year-old black girl who is brutally raped and almost killed by two rednecks riding around in a pickup truck. The girl's father, Carl Lee Hailey (Samuel L. Jackson), kills the two men in cold blood on their way to the court hearing. It then becomes necessary for Carl Lee to hire an attorney, and he chooses young Jake Brigance (Matthew McConaughey) to defend him. The Ku Klux Klan then plan to get revenge on behalf of their fellow members who were slain.
After many twists and turns in the movie, Carl Lee perseveres and is acquitted of the crime. The natural acting ability, particularly by McConaughey and Jackson, makes this film come to life. McConaughey and Jackson act their butts off. McConaughey is smart and sexy and physical, and he's got a wonderfully subtle rapport with Jackson, who gives one of the most wrenching performances of his busy career. I was absorbed by A Time to Kill, and found the performances strong and convincing, especially the work by Samuel L. Jackson as Carl Lee Hailey, the avenging father, and Matthew McConaughey as Jack Brigance, the lawyer. The acting is so persuasive and the direction is so fluid that the material seems convincing while it's happening. Idealism arises in the unlikely form of Jake Brigance, who is played by the suddenly and, on the basis of this performance, deservedly chic Matthew McConaughey. I was also impressed with the way McConaughey pulled off the heart-wrenching closing toward the end of the movie.
A Time to Kill . . . is a skillfully constructed morality play that pushes all the right buttons and arrives at the right conclusions. The film's makers have transferred us back to a more innocent and predictable movie world, a place where good hearts are self-consciously liberal hearts, brimming--O.K., bleeding--with the belief that honorable argument will defeat vile and skulking prejudice. The outcome of the...