A Time to Kill. 1996. USA. Directed by Joel Schumacher. With Sandra Bullock, Matthew McConaughey, Samuel L. Jackson, Kevin Spacey. 35mm. 149 min.
Joel Schumacher’s second John Grisham adaptation (following 1994’s The Client) is this stirring courtroom epic, with heartbroken father Carl Lee Hailey (Samuel L. Jackson) at its core. After the brutal rape and near murder of his 10-year-old daughter, Carl Lee kills the two rapists and stands trial for double homicide. Young attorney Jake Brigance (Matthew McConaughey) must defend Carl Lee in Canton, Mississippi, a community teeming with racial tension, in a system designed to fail its Black residents. In a 2023 Vulture interview, Jackson reflected on the film’s editing, explaining how he felt some key scenes were cut “because it wasn’t my movie, and they weren’t trying to make me a star.” Despite this, his performance outshines the talented ensemble cast, leading Janet Maslin of the New York Times to remark that Carl Lee “is played by a scorchingly terrific Samuel L. Jackson…who by any reasonable measure should be the film’s most important character.” While tonally imperfect and at times convoluted, the film nonetheless presents an incisive, damning portrait of America—violent, divided, with its legal institutions compromised—that feels more relevant in 2024 than it may have in 1996.