Runaway Jury (2003)
Directed by Gary Fleder
After a workplace shooting in New Orleans, a trial against the gun manufacturer pits lawyer Wendell Rohr against shady jury consultant Rankin Fitch, who uses illegal means to stack the jury with people sympathetic to the defense. But when juror Nicholas Easter and his girlfriend Marlee reveal their ability to sway the jury into delivering any verdict they want, a high-stakes cat-and-mouse game begins.
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What critics compared Runaway Jury to
In a post-''12 Angry Men'' era of jury dramas, good doesn't necessarily triumph and audiences don't necessarily sit still for the conversations of actors locked in a room; but this effective bamboozle of a thriller maintains its own tricky balance of junk and hope.
Secondly, not since the 1957 film 12 Angry Men has a movie about serving on a jury also been so compelling.
You might expect that when Fleder gets the jury into deliberations and the crunch time comes for Cusack to work his con the movie might deliver some "12 Angry Men"-style fireworks.
The target of the John Grisham novel was the tobacco industry, but I'm certain that Grisham—who once called for the prosecution of Oliver Stone after a killing spree inspired by his grotesque Natural Born Killers (1994)—had no problems with the substitution of one unscrupulous death merchant for another.