A Time to Kill

A Time to Kill (1996) starring Sandra Bullock, Samuel L. Jackson, Matthew McConaughey, Kevin Spacey. When his ten-year-old daughter is raped by two rednecks, a black man (Jackson) takes the law into his own hands, killing the two rapists and injuring a sheriff's deputy. He hires a lawyer (McConaughey) to defend him from the murder charges, but the deck is stacked against him in the Mississippi town where the trial takes place. At two hours, thirty minutes, this movie is a bit long, but it is stuffed full of action and never drags. Based on a John Grisham novel, it suffers all the flaws of Grisham's writing. It tends toward the melodramatic and oversimplified -- but its heart is in the right place. It's stuffed full of actors who already were or would become big names. (English subtitles for the hearing impaired are available on the disc, as well as closed captions.) Grade: B