Double Jeopardy

One problem with "Double Jeopardy" is we've all seen the movie before at some point. A woman's child is unlawfully taken away from her by a man, with some sort of violence involved, and she must give up everything and dedicate herself to trying to regain the child. It's the plot of several TV movies and probably a few works of cinema I can't think of right now. Thus, every plot twist, villainous ploy, and sudden change of heart can be forecast by a barely sentient viewer starting from about minute 30 of the actual movie. There are more illustrious performers in this film than there are in most TV movies, of course, but one of them is Tommy Lee Jones, and if you haven't seen him play a crusty law-enforcement officer with a heart of gold at some point in the last five years you just haven't been going to movies. The rest of the characters are familiar stereotypes: the scheming father, the other woman, the reluctant sheriff, the hard-bitten but loyal female convicts. There are some truly hilarious scenes in this movie too, but it is emphatically not a comedy. And, while there is a bit of action in the movie, mostly centering around creative and exciting new approaches to using a car, action is certainly not the be-all and end-all of this movie. So with the plot utterly predictable and most of the characters previously accounted for, what we are left with is an almost-two-hour exercise in staring at Ashley Judd's face.

Not that this is a bad thing. In fact, Ashley Judd's face is this movie's main reason for existence, and a good reason it is. Ashley Judd is an attractive woman who has mastered the facial expressions she needed to for this film, including: (a) blissfully happy (and unaware of the schemes around her), (b) shocked and appalled (that anyone could actually think she killed her husband), (c) determined (to make her husband suffer unimaginable horrors for his deceit), and (d) fulfilled (when she finally sees her son again). She also has mastered staring into space and making the audience believe that she's thinking about something, always an elusive art. It doesn't hurt that her face, like this movie, is exceptionally well photographed. (I would like to take this time to note for the drooling male student population that she only has one nude scene, and it is shadowy indeed, obscuring most everything. It doesn't hurt, though.) Her beautiful face stands up to all the endless scrutiny the camera subjects it to: in shadows, in sunlight, with rural greenery or urban nightlife as backdrop, you just never tire of her face. And you believe everything it says she's feeling without question.

Since Judd's believability is pretty much the only thing saving this film from a fate worse than "The Deep End of the Ocean," this emotional credibility is a very, very good thing for the movie. In fact, the rest of the movie falls into place around it. Judd's motivations, which might come into question for an actress whose face is less sympathetic, seem completely understandable and rational to the audience. Tommy Lee Jones isn't playing the only character he seems to know how to play anymore one more time, he's a real guy who's really conflicted about how to treat the paroled convict that is Ashley Judd. Minor characters who are perhaps somewhat unoriginal in conception become interesting because they are imparting information or emotional support to Judd (or, alternately, are reviled because they are not providing anything for Judd). A scene where Judd informs a man who is prospecting for a date that she has, in fact, been convicted of murdering her husband is much more funny from someone whose anguish earlier in the movie was so palpable. Gratuitously destructive pickup truck driving is much more enjoyable when Judd is doing it. The audience is even ready to overlook the outlandishly unrealistic plot because, hey, it's all happening to Ashley Judd.

As you may be suspecting by now, this is not a movie that stands up to any intellectual scrutiny or world-weary cynicism at all, and it should probably be noted somewhere around here that I would have rather seen Judd in an actual good movie. But I do not consider myself an easy emotional sway, and yet my heart was warmed at the end of this movie when it got to the big tearful reunion finale. "Double Jeopardy" will never be considered a masterpiece, but thanks to Ashley Judd it is quite entertaining, and sometimes that's all you need.

This was the first movie review I got published in the Diamondback. I introduced it on the list with this:

The following review (possibly in shortened form) WILL BE PUBLISHED IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND DIAMONDBACK AND I WILL BE PAID a pittance FOR HAVING WRITTEN IT. I SAW IT ON A PREVIEW PASS LAST NIGHT, BEFORE ALL YOU PLEBES COULD HAVE SEEN IT. Sorry about that "plebes" remark. I think showbiz is giving me a swelled head already.

When I read it now, I'm always impressed at how I took the crazy review angle and just pursued it without thinking of what was professional. The angle suggested itself. I got better than this, of course — the first review I wrote that I think of as a "professional" review came a few months later — but I'm glad that I kept my voice and adapted my style rather than junking my voice to fit a style and later wanting the voice back again. If that makes any sense.

This review is also notable because my editor Dan added the word "straight" before "male population," which screwed up the sentence but alerted me to the fact that I had not been entirely sensitive to our homosexual brethren and sistren previously. I think the ways I got around this problem in subsequent reviews are pretty inventive.

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