BEFORE: These last few films have all been about setting myself up for an appropriate film for July 4 - then I've got the rest of July planned out, with no real benchmarks until October, except for the four films that I want to go see in the theater. Those are like the signposts that will be letting me know I'm on the right track, if I can see all of those films before they disappear from theaters, and I can see them all while I have some down time, before I go back to work at the second job. Which, quite ironically, is in a movie theater, but it's not the kind that plays the first-run hits, not most of the time, anyway.
Samuel L. Jackson carries over from "Barely Lethal".
THE PLOT: A district attorney has his life turned upside down when he's involved in a hit and run and another man is arrested for his crime and charged with murder.
AFTER: I've got a little legal thriller tonight, which is fine because "Law & Order" is off for the summer, as usual - but we really don't know when the writer's strike is going to end, do we? So who knows if we'll have new episodes of network TV shows when September rolls around. I don't know how far in advance the network production companies buy scripts, like do they stockpile them or is it more of a pay-as-you-go kind of system? I guess we'll find out in a few weeks. But then there's talk of the actors union going on strike, too - so really, nobody knows what's going to happen, least of all me. Maybe the premium cable channels will dig up every old movie that I haven't seen yet, and I'll get a chance to really catch up, like I'm doing now with "Chopped" episodes. Every day now I watch an episode of "Jeopardy!" and an episode of "Chopped", who knows, maybe by September I'll be all caught up and I can finally watch "Lost". I've been trying to do that for YEARS.
Anyway, "Reasonable Doubt" is a legal drama set in the very small town of Chicago - I say it's a small town because here everybody seems to know each other, and coincidences abound. The D.A. who accidentally runs a man over while driving home drunk gets called on to represent the man who gets charged with his murder, creating a legal conundrum. Yes, of course the attorney should have owned up to his mistake right away, but he didn't, because a DUI would have jeopardized his career. Right off the bat, the D.A. has broken the law and won't admit it - yeah, that sounds like Chicago all right. Weren't the last governor of Illinois and ALL the Chicago mayors ever in some kind of legal trouble? Jeez, maybe the D.A. SHOULD have admitted he was driving drunk, that sounds like the fasttrack to a successful political career in Chicagoland.
Anyway, Mitch Brockden, the district attorney is SUPPOSED to now prosecute Clinton Davis for the man's murder - when Davis claims he was just being a Good Samaritan and giving the injured man a ride to the hospital when the ambulance didn't show up. Brockden KNOWS that Davis is innocent of murder, because he HIMSELF is the guy that hit the man with his car. But he can't say that in court, not without implicating himself, and anyway, his job is to prosecute him based on the evidence presented, not clear him based on outside information he learned outside the court. Right? Again, the decent thing to do would be for Brockden to admit his crime AND his mistake in not reporting it, but this film's not about doing the decent thing.
Oh, also Brockden has a reputation - he never loses a case. But he knows the accused is innocent, so the right thing to do would be to half-ass it and lose the case. But then he'd surrender his "never lost a case" status - oh, it's quite a pickle. What to do? Some tech guys go to work on the 911 call that Brockden made, and they think they've found a match, based on the available technology of the time (2014) and this points them to - wait for it - Brockden's dirtbag ex-con step-brother, who's like a 90% voice match. Gotta call a big NITPICK POINT here, because it's stated that Mitch and his step-brother, Jimmy Logan, are not related by blood, their parents just had a common-law marriage. So why would their voices sound the same? Simple answer - they wouldn't.
But, that's enough to get the accused declared not guilty - hence the title of the film. OK, that's that, problem solved, we can all get on with our lives. Wait, wait, there's more, because the police forensics team thinks that maybe the man was hurt before he was struck by a car, his wounds were consistent with vehicular manslaughter, but also possibly consistent with something else. So maybe the "innocent" man isn't so innocent, maybe he was targeting certain people and hurting them, but if so, why? And if he injured the man before he was struck by the D.A.'s car, he's already been found innocent of that crime, and he can't be tried again because of the double jeopardy laws, under which the point values on the board are twice as much. No, wait, that can't be right....
Anyway, the whole thing might be more complex than it initially appeared, but no more spoilers here. The D.A. has to decide how far he wants to go into this case, even after he kind of got like a free pass for driving drunk and a hit-and-run. You know, maybe he should have just taken the win and left well enough alone - but you just know he's not going to do that, right? I don't know, this one was good and twisty and scratched my legal drama itch, but I have a feeling that six months from now, I'm not even going to remember this movie. Kind of like "The Whole Truth" from late 2021, or "Broken City" or "A Most Wanted Man" or "The Operative". Look, I can only remember so many movies at once, and the new ones keep pushing the old ones out the back. Sorry.
Also starring Dominic Cooper (last seen in "An Education"), Gloria Reuben (last seen in "The Sentinel"), Ryan Robbins (last seen in "Walking Tall"), Erin Karpluk, Dylan Taylor (last seen in "Fahrenheit 451"), Karl Thordarson, Dean Harder, Carson Nattrass, John B. Lowe (last seen in "Flag Day"), Philippe Brenninkmeyer (last seen in "The Slammin' Salmon"), Jessica Burleson, Kelly Wolfman, Darren Wall, Lane Styles, Lance Cartwright, Thanya Romero, Chris Witkowski II, Verity Marks.
RATING: 5 out of 10 business cards
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