Say hello to hotshot Assistant District
Attorney Mitch Brockden (Dominic Cooper) who will be
headlining for us in this film 'Reasonable Doubt'.
You've met him already if seen a lawyer TV show or any movie
featuring a lawyer somewhere within the last fifty
years. He's young, brash, arrogant, gives killer closing
arguments and he never loses. That guy. Usually
this guy gets into trouble when something lands outside his
purview, be it an unwise affair, or taking on the wrong client
or his family gets kidnapped or his drug problem gets out of
control… note to future screenwriters, make a movie featuring
a lawyer with all of the above, it will be a smash.
Mitch is no different as he is about to get into a little
trouble that will fall slightly outside his purview, and all
we want is to be thrilled while he works it out. That's
what a Thriller is supposed to do. We will let you know
if that happened.
Mitch has just won his latest case in superior fashion and he
and his boys are out celebrating his awesomeness when Mitch
unwisely drives home a little drunk. By chance he runs
over this dude on a snowy Chicago street and seeing his career
fading away, he leaves the dude in the street but at least
calls an ambulance from a nearby pay phone. We gotta say
this dude he just hit looks mighty f'd up to just get hit by a
car. Just sayin'.
Mitch is frazzled, because he's not a bad guy, despite his
profession, and he's a little more frazzled when somebody is
arrested for killing this dude he ran over. This guys
name is Clifton Davis (Samuel L. Jackson) and the cops pulled
him over for having the bloodied guy in the back of his
van. Davis says he was just taking him to the hospital
after a hit and run, but the cops, particularly beautiful
detective Blake Kanon (Gloria Rueben), think Davis killed this
dude and worst yet, she thinks he might be a serial
killer. The fact that the detective is beautiful has
nothing to do with anything relating to this movie, but she
is.
Well, Mitch knows that Davis didn't kill this
guy because he killed the guy, and he decides to take the case
on as prosecutor and maybe tank the case to get Davis
free. Besides, Mitch being a family man with a beautiful
wife (Erin Karpluk) and new baby can relate to Davis on some
level due to Davis' pain of losing his own wife and child to
some crazed murderer a few years back.
Things do kind of work out to Mitch's plan, though the trial
did have some tense moments here and there, but now Mitch is
starting to think that maybe he didn't do the right
thing. I mean of course he didn't do the right thing,
the right thing being calling the police after you run
somebody down with your car, but one issue compounds upon
another and now Mitch has a genuine situation on his
hands. Will Mitch and his family escape this mess
alive? Mitch is kind of stupid so he probably shouldn't,
but he probably will.
Want to know what one of my problems is with this adequately
entertaining, if not somewhat generic thriller 'Reasonable
Doubt'? The trailer. Now I don't know how you make
a trailer without giving away key plot points of your film,
yet still keep enough of your film in this trailer so that
people want see it. Maybe just ride the fact that
Dominic Cooper is a fast rising star and Sam Jackson looks out
of his mind? But the trailer gives away too much of this film
which doesn't really allow for an organic viewing experience,
and we all know that organic viewing is the best kind of
viewing, right?
All that being said, what you are going to get with director
Peter Howitt's film, if you choose to accept this mission, is
a well crafted, sharply executed, decently paced thriller
where we follow the actions of one dumb guy as he does stupid
thing after stupid thing. There are some logical things
Mitch could have done once he discovered his error, and then
there's what Mitch actually does, and this is the point where
'Reasonable Doubt' will either sink or swim for most
viewers. For me, while fully recognizing that Mitch
places everybody in his life in grave danger with his
stupidity, I found it entertaining watching him do this.
Someone else on the other hand might hope for a smarter script
that can achieve its ends using different, more clever
means. Clearly that's not us here at the FCU.
The completely British Dominic Cooper did a fine job playing a
guy from Chicago, who is actually in Canada somewhere where
this movie was shot, and do you think Samuel L. Jackson can
play crazy? Why yes he can. Can Gloria Rubin play
a beautiful tough cop? Sure! She did it for years
on that show… uh… it was on Lifetime and I can't remember the
name of it… but yeah, she can. And while the character
of Mitch might not have been all that bright, I did enjoy the
way that Sam Jackson's character was crafted in that he
existed in a gray area between good and evil, at least until
we got to our generic thriller ending.
So we liked 'Reasonable Doubt'. Solid, well crafted,
well acted and largely predictable, but entertaining.
