Novelist John Grisham’s first stab at writing a screenplay looked promising with that director and that cast. Kenneth Branagh is good, with a Southern drawl and all, as the clueless Georgia attorney who gets to know a woman (Embeth Davidtz) who is tormented by her deranged father (Robert Duvall). The movie is a classically sweaty, over-the-top Southern tale. Symbolically enough, as the story keeps building in intensity, so does an approaching hurricane. The film is overblown but amusing even though you eventually get the feeling that what you’re watching doesn’t add up.

1998-U.S. 115 min. Color. Directed by Robert Altman. Screenplay: John Grisham. Cast: Kenneth Branagh (Rick Magruder), Embeth Davidtz (Mallory Doss), Robert Downey, Jr. (Clyde Pell), Daryl Hannah, Tom Berenger, Famke Janssen… Robert Duvall.

Trivia: The screenplay was credited to the pseudonymous “Al Hayes”.

Published 2004-03-21 10:25