A Time to Kill

Undoubtedly one of Joel Schumacher's best films, although it's fair to say that with John Grisham source material and a very good script by Akiva Goldsman, it couldn't have turned out any other way. A Time to Kill is a brilliant courtroom drama that manages to remarkably link the most serious individual crimes with the toxic and unrelenting interracial hatred in Mississippi and moreover put everything into the proper context. The sumptuous cast, ranging from the passionate (which is slightly unfair in the context of the plot, but I didn't mean it that way at first) idealist Matthew McConaughey to the endearingly proper Sandra Bullock to the slimy and implacable Kevin Spacey, is simply divine. They're all divine here though, including Samuel L. Jackson and Donald Sutherland. One of the top courtroom movies with an extremely evocative closing speech by a then twenty-seven year old Matthew McConaughey, for whom this was actually the first really major and character role in the true sense of the word. (17/08/2020)

A traditional southern Grisham film based on the 1988 novel of the same name. The film is a riveting courtroom drama with many pressing themes that are conveyed with equal verve in both mediums. Of the performances, Matthew McConaughey towers above all, especially in the final speech. Samuel L. Jackson is also great, but Sandra Bullock is just a poster attraction - her role is relatively small and just completes the all-star team. (04/05/2022)

Average, average, and more average. On the one hand, the great Samuel L. Jackson, the admirable "shark" Kevin Spacey, excellent (all of them) chilling scenes with the Ku Klux Klan and Goldenthal's chilling music along with them, but on the other hand we get Matthew McConaughey, who is not very believable, the completely unnecessary Sandra Bullock character (even more unnecessary than in the book), several downright ridiculous moments (the bomb, the shooting of the soldier...) and that sickeningly saccharine ending... Two and a half stars. (18/12/2011)

Joel Schumacher is a master of either strongly conflicting dramas or absolutely strange fantasies and anything else that is... weird. This means that one day, he shoots an absolutely amazing movie based on real-life events, but once he gets to a rather improbable and often fantastic story, he’s hopeless. Luckily, A Time To Kill is the first one of the two. What’s more, it’s based on a book, so it really can grab your attention for its lengthy 149 minutes. But that’s not only thanks to the director; Matthew McConaughey usurped a substantial part of the movie for himself. You could even say that it is literally his movie – even despite the fact that it’s basically his very first lead role that dazzled Hollywood. Hats off! I kind of feel like lawyer roles in movies predominantly about black people and racism somehow befit him. It’s not just a coincidence, right? (11/04/2014)

This time it's best to start from the end. The final and supposedly gripping and authentic speech by Matthew McConaughey left me completely indifferent. It's brutally implausible and it won’t make you transform into a gullible jury member, so unless you want to feel it at all cost, you won't feel anything. The chemistry between the young lawyer and the ambitious student is great and they complement each other well, Kevin Spacey delivers excellent wisecracks and the permanently “sozzled” Donald Sutherland plays a role that is not often seen. And we must not forget the main antagonist, whose revenge was much more believable than those legal entanglements. However, the biggest driving force remains the initial brutal act and the subsequent chaos in the bar. (27/10/2007)