Killing Time

In today's society nothing is more valuable than time. Our technological advances like fax machines, P.C.'s, V.C.R.'s, beepers, cell phones are designed to help cut down on the amount of time it takes to do a common task. Personal planners and calendars are as important as food, water and shelter for many people these days. Anything that takes longer than deemed necessary, like having to stand in line, being put on hold, and mail that doesn't arrive overnight not only inconveniences people, but genuinely pisses them off.

With all this emphasis on convenience, it is almost a crime to waste someone else's time. People are willing to pay a little bit more for a product or a service if it will save them a little time. Any short cut, anything that is seen as a time saving measure is treasured more than gold. Therefore enduring two hours of a complete waste of time is difficult to justify. You can't turn back the clock, you can't get back lost time. Not too many of us have time to spare, time to kill.

There will come a time when time comes to an end. And just a little bit before then, Hollywood will stop making movies because there will be no more stories to be told (plus all TV shows will have already been made into motion pictures). Judging from the movie, A Time to Kill, we may be closer to that time than any of us wants to believe. We've already seen this movie before, only better in other movies such as To Kill a Mockingbird, and Mississippi Burning.

A Time to Kill is a story about time. It was John Grisham's first novel and it probably took a long time for him to write. There are a lot of words. It took a long time for the book to become a movie. It wants to tell a story with a message. Our justice system does not work and is corrupt. Everyone from the judge to the jury, from the lawyers to the witnesses are cynically out of control. Just when is a murder justified?

Should have been, would have been, could have been, wanna be. A Time To Kill is all that and more. With a cast of Samuel L. Jackson, Kevin Spacey, Sandra Bullock and Matthew McConaughey this movie should have been decent. And it would have been had the story not been yet another brainless courtroom formula picture with a blurred message. The movie wants to say something but contradicts itself at every turn.

It argues that the Samuel L. Jackson is ultimately just in taking the law into his own hands because the crime committed against his daughter is atrocious enough that the system can't possibly work and justice will not be served. What it fails to demonstrate however is why Jackson is any more justified in his actions than the clueless Klansmen are in theirs. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

Of course some of us don't go to movies to be educated, enlightened over even entertained. Some of us go because of the appeal of the star. As long as your favorite star is up there on the screen, you will watch just about anything. Thus it must be said that Sandra Bullock once again is a delight the few times she is on the screen. Her role as a talented young law student is an attempt to return to the art of serious acting in serious filmmaking attempts. Unfortunately, even her instant likeability can't rescue the dreck of A Time To Kill. Her finest role remains in 1993's Wrestling Ernest Hemingway and she obviously is trying to get away from that which made her ultra-popular if not lightweight in While You Were Sleeping and The Net. By the time her character is essentially disposed of in A Time to Kill in one of the movie's many brutal scenes, one is sitting uncomfortably in one's seat waiting for the inevitable conclusion, the big court room speech, to take place.

It is time however for Sandra to find a film that can both utilize her charismatic talents along with deliver a message worth paying attention to. This one isn't it.