Runaway Jury - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Overview

Runaway Jury is a 2003 American drama

Drama film

A drama film is a film genre that depends mostly on in-depth development of realistic characters dealing with emotional themes. Dramatic themes such as alcoholism, drug addiction, infidelity, moral dilemmas, racial prejudice, religious intolerance, poverty, class divisions, violence against women...

/thriller film

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

directed by Gary Fleder

Gary Fleder

Gary Fleder is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. His most recently completed film, The Express, is based on the true story of football player Ernie Davis, and was released by Universal Pictures in October 2008....

and starring John Cusack

John Cusack

John Paul Cusack is an American film actor and screenwriter. He has appeared in more than 50 films, including The Journey of Natty Gann, Say Anything..., Grosse Point Blank, The Thin Red Line, Stand by Me, Con Air, Being John Malkovich, High Fidelity, Serendipity, Runaway Jury, The Ice Harvest,...

, Gene Hackman

Gene Hackman

Eugene Allen "Gene" Hackman is an American actor and novelist.Nominated for five Academy Awards, winning two, Hackman has also won three Golden Globes and two BAFTAs in a career that spanned five decades. He first came to fame in 1967 with his performance as Buck Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde...

, Dustin Hoffman

Dustin Hoffman

Dustin Lee Hoffman is an American actor with a career in film, television, and theatre since 1960. He has been known for his versatile portrayals of antiheroes and vulnerable characters....

, and Rachel Weisz

Rachel Weisz

Rachel Hannah Weisz born 7 March 1970)is an English-American film and theatre actress and former fashion model. She started her acting career at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where she co-founded the theatrical group Cambridge Talking Tongues...

. It is an adaptation of John Grisham

John Grisham

John Ray Grisham, Jr. is an American lawyer and author, best known for his popular legal thrillers.John Grisham graduated from Mississippi State University before attending the University of Mississippi School of Law in 1981 and practiced criminal law for about a decade...

's novel The Runaway Jury
The Runaway Jury
The Runaway Jury is a legal thriller novel written by American author John Grisham. The hardcover first edition was published by Doubleday Books in 1996 . Pearson Longman released the graded reader edition in 2001 . The novel was published again in 2003 to coincide with the release of Runaway...

.
In New Orleans, Louisiana

New Orleans, Louisiana

New Orleans is a major United States port and the largest city and metropolitan area in the state of Louisiana. The New Orleans metropolitan area has a population of 1,235,650 as of 2009, the 46th largest in the USA. The New Orleans – Metairie – Bogalusa combined statistical area has a population...

, a failed day trader

Day trader

A day trader is a trader who buys and sells financial instruments within the same trading day such that all positions will usually be closed before the market close of the trading day. This trading style is called day trading...

at a stock brokerage firm shows up at his former workplace with a semiautomatic handgun and opens fire on his former colleagues, killing himself soon after. Among the dead is Jacob Wood (Dylan McDermott

Dylan McDermott

Mark Anthony McDermott , better known by his professional name of Dylan McDermott, is an American actor, known for his role as lawyer and law firm head Bobby Donnell on the television legal drama The Practice and his role in the series Dark Blue as Lt. Carter Shaw. McDermott currently stars in FX...

in a brief uncredited role). Two years later, armed with pro bono

Pro bono

Pro bono publico is a Latin phrase generally used to describe professional work undertaken voluntarily and without payment or at a reduced fee as a public service. It is common in the legal profession and is increasingly seen in marketing, technology, and strategy consulting firms...

attorney Wendell Rohr (Dustin Hoffman

Dustin Hoffman

Dustin Lee Hoffman is an American actor with a career in film, television, and theatre since 1960. He has been known for his versatile portrayals of antiheroes and vulnerable characters....

), Jacob's widow Celeste (Joanna Going

Joanna Going

Joanna C. Going is an American actress.-Early life and education:Born in Washington, D.C., she is the oldest of six children of Lorraine M...

) decides to take the weapon's manufacturer, Vicksburg Firearms, to court on the grounds that the company's gross negligence led to her husband's death.
As the trial date draws near, jury consultant Rankin Fitch (Gene Hackman

Gene Hackman

Eugene Allen "Gene" Hackman is an American actor and novelist.Nominated for five Academy Awards, winning two, Hackman has also won three Golden Globes and two BAFTAs in a career that spanned five decades. He first came to fame in 1967 with his performance as Buck Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde...

) arrives in town.

Unanswered Questions

How does Nicholas Easter impress the jury?

What communication occurs between Herman Grimes and Judge Harkin

More

Quotations

Gentlemen, trials are too important to be left up to juries.

You think your average juror is King Solomon|King Solomon? No! He's a roofer with a mortgage. He wants to go home and sit in his Barcalounger and let the cable TV wash over him. And this man doesn't give a single, solitary droplet of shit about truth, justice or your American way.

Everybody has a secret they don't want you to find. Find it!

We like fat women, people!

Ah, I hate Baptist|Baptists almost as much as I hate Democratic Party|Democrats.

You may be right, but the thing of it is, I don't give a shit. What's more... I never have.

Ladies and Gentlemen, this girl is an amateur. Do you understand? A dilettante. And I want this nonsense ended today! I want you to find her. I want you to contain her! Because you're losing me my jury!

What do you hope to achieve if you win? You gonna bring Jacob Wood back to life? No. You just ensure that his wife goes to the cemetery in a better car, and that the heel that she snaps on the way to the graveside belongs to a $1,200 shoe. You get your name in the paper. But Jacob Wood and all the other gun violence victims remain rotting in their crypts.

Nicholas Easter: [after anti-gun fanatic is dragged kicking and screaming from the courtroom during jury selection] Well, I guess that's lunch...

Henry Jankle: ...I was under the impression that we'd already purchased ourselves a verdict.

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