The Juror

Yeah, I know it's popular to diss movies like this and even more popular to diss Demi Moore. I'm gonna have to report, though, that Demi Moore IS the best thing about this movie and, as I have discovered, she CAN act. It's been a long time since I saw this film but I can still remember her wonderfully fierce, beautiful performance that rises above the pouty, mediocre script. I was also struck by her performance in "The Seventh Sign" (which was better written than "The Juror"). So, I guess what I'm trying to say here is, C'mon give her a chance, watch some of her films and decide for yourself. This may not be her best film, but it is one of her best performances. Oh yeah, other reasons to watch this film are nice supporting performances from Alec Baldwin and Anne Heche. Oh yeah, and if after watching this you don't believe that Ms. Moore can act, check out "Ghost" or "GI Jane" and then tell me that those are two of the gutsiest performances of the decade. So, take it or leave it...I guess it sounds like I'm a big fan of hers, which I'm really not, just sick of all of the trash talk that she can't act.

It was a full time job to watch this movie. A lot of work. Did Gary Marshal direct it? Should I check my facts? Guh! Like a dry heave sound. Man this movie...was not fun to watch, that's the nice way of putting it. I mean when they read the script whoever they are did they know it was for THIS movie? It would be easier to let the magic eight-ball write the script. Forecast uncertain try again. Do you want to know the plot? If I don't tell you the plot and which actors play which characters are you not going to be able to understand my review? You know they list all that stuff of the IMDb movie's page, if you are reading this review you have already passed it.

Not too bad. It begins with a situation any experienced movie maven is likely to regard as stock. A representative of the mob, Alex Baldwin, contacts a juror, Demi Moore, in a murder case against mob boss Tony Lo Bianco. Baldwin informs Moore that she has a very fine son. He'll stay healthy as long as Moore sees to it that the jury brings in the verdict of not guilty. The rest could have been written by the numbers twenty or thirty years ago, but now is not then. The all-powerful mob has been done to death and it must now be portrayed as in decline, slowly being edged out by the Calle cartel and other organizations of that ilk. A further novelty is the casting of Alex Baldwin as Vince, the smooth-talking enforcer. He doesn't look particularly Italian. He doesn't wear suits of raw silk. He doesn't use double negatives. He ends his gerunds with a pronounced "g" -- "going" instead of "goin'". Baldwin's part is a complex one. He begins as another tool of the Mafia, although his relationship with them is properly ambivalent. He manipulates Demi Moore into complying with his demands through a fluid set of threats and fake concerns about her and her family. As in, "Please, I beg you, don't make me kill your son." To put an end to any doubt, Baldwin picks up Moore's best friend, Anne Heche, to whom Moore has spilled every bean available. He beds her and then smiles as he forces her at pistol point to swallow a lethal dose of barbiturates. Then he appears genuinely to fall in love with Moore. Their tense bond has been, as he puts it, like a marriage. Tearfully, but still manfully, he says, "I'm sorry you hate me, Annie, because I really do love you." As I said, the emotions behind his role are always in process, but Baldwin manages to pull it off. He may be right on both counts. He loves her, true, but she really DOES hate him. After she finagles a not guilty verdict out of the other jurors, she hates him enough to cooperate with the cops and betray him to his Mafia bosses. The good fellas try to whack him but he's a clever guy and sees to their demise instead. I mean, you know he's clever because he's pronouncing all those "g"s. Probably graduated from Reed College. But, having discovered Moore's betrayal, he displays a vengeful persona never before shown. Moore is trying to hide her son in a remote Guatamalan village. Baldwin flies to Guatamala to kill the kid, Moore in another airplane right behind him. There is a final shoot out, naturally, that leaves a few loose ends dangling. That climactic character of Baldwin's is strictly by the book. Any subtlety we've seen earlier is all gone. He's just another bloodthirsty villain to be outwitted. Moore has to kill Baldwin, naturally -- but not before he tries to sneak a hidden pistol out of his ankle holster. We can't have the heroine shoot him down in cold blood. Anything but that. Demi Moore has always been kind of a puzzle to me. She can act, but lots of people her age can act. She's never been in an outstanding movie and she's not staggeringly beautiful, not exotic in any way, yet her career goes on. That's okay. I'm not complaining. I only wish there were more to be seen on the screen. She has a husky voice, a strong splanchnocranium, hard eyes, and a neck of substance. It fits the part. The role hardly calls for an hysterical weeper with spindly limbs. The film is nicely textured. We see the friendships and the tensions within and between groups. We see uncertainty, ambiguity, a nebulous patchwork of values that we innocents would be hard put to deal with.

Obviously aimed for those who love the John Grisham type of thriller, THE JUROR has all the elements for a suspenseful film about jury tampering amid the trial of a Mafia boss, but doesn't quite reach its full potential. Perhaps the climactic showdown in Guatemala is where the story really runs into trouble finding a proper conclusion. DEMI MOORE remains rather detached in her role as a young woman who is approached by ALEC BALDWIN for seemingly innocent purposes, when it turns out that he is actually someone called "The Teacher" assigned to get her to sway the others on the jury to vote for an acquittal. He's so menacing (and Baldwin does "menacing" as well as any method actor available), that she reluctantly does her best to persuade the jurors to change their votes. Fortunately, these lamebrains have no capacity for thinking because it seems the lawyers have done an excellent job of finding the dumbest panel imaginable. But the story doesn't end with Moore influencing the verdict. That's just the beginning of even more peril for her. It's the kind of film that works up to a point. But once the plot deals with further issues, it really gets out of hand. MOORE gives one of her less impressive performances, barely looking like a damsel in distress at any point. However, it's ALEC BALDWIN who makes the deepest impression with his sadistic villainy. He's never been one of my favorite persons (off the screen) but I have to admit he can play lowlifes with the best of them. It's an average thriller, too lengthy for its own good and with an ending that should have been rewritten to make it more believable.

If you have two hours to kill (or whack, in the mob nomenclature), then feel free to watch The Juror, a brain-dead thriller that is best witnessed on TV (you don't have to pay for it and you can pretty-much tell when the cussing, sex, and bloodletting are being snipped out). It's an easy synopsis, here--mob boss orders a hit, Alec Baldwin carries it out, there's a trial, Demi Moore gets threatened in order to keep her from voting "guilty," biff-boom-bang. By the end, there are lots of bullet holes in the bad guys, Moore has turned from cutesy artist to Dirty Harriet, and, if you're an Anne Heche or Alec Baldwin fan, you are wondering if you should rent this nonsense to see what all happened in the sack. Since I am neither, I'll stick with the butchered-for-TV version and hope that not all juries are as stupid as the one Demi served on.