Well, I just finished this book. Awesome ending. I should have figured it out before I did, but it was great. I highly recommend this book.
This book is worth the money IMO and I can’t wait to see the movie.
What are your views on this book/movie?
I liked this book as well. Probably my second favorite Grisham after A Time to Kill. And the movie has John Cusack, Gene Hackman, and mmmmm… Rachel Weisz
Loved the film. One thing I didn’t get was…
[Spoiler]
why Marlee offered the sale to BOTH Rohr and Fitch, when the whole plot was about screwing solely Fitch. If they had successfully bribed Rohr, they would have gotten the money, sure, but Fitch would still be on the loose and there’d be no vengeance.
It occurred to me that they might have gone after Rohr knowing that he’d turn it down, if only to make the deal look more realisitic.[/Spoiler]
But this wasn’t made clear in the film, and I wonder if the book does so.
By the way, did anyone else keep thinking Hackman’s character was named “Frankenfitch”? I mean, the guy was a monster, but I can’t imagine Grisham being THAT punny.
I haven’t seen the film but I enjoyed the book immensely. It’s number three on my Grisham list, behind The Firm (although it gets boring the second time) and The Chamber.
There are some major changes between the book and the movie. The locale is moved from Biloxi, MS to “exotic” New Orleans. The case in the book is changed from suing Big Tobacco to suing a gun manufacturer. And the accents…so wrong. The only person in the movie who had an authentic-sounding accent was the judge, but his was not a Louisiana accent. They made New Orleans residents sound like hicks! And Rachel Weisz incorrectly refers to a Creole woman as a Cajun. Gah! 
I really did like the movie, though. Any movie that induces paranoia is okay by me. Very exciting. And it has John Cusack…Er, sorry, I forgot what I had to say…
Lovers of the book – as with most Grisham’s – will be disappointed in the movie, I think, if for no other reason than the switch of industries from big tobacco to a gun manufacturer, which changes one of the important underlying plot issues in a big way. (Much easier to be subtle about people’s feelings about cigarettes than about handguns, to be sure.)
I am saving the movie for a weekend Blockbuster rental, Hackman and Hoffman notwithstanding.
Marlee never went to Rohr. She made it seem like it to scare Fitch. I remember reading where she told Fitch this after they secured their deal.
You have to be kidding? Why did they change it to a gun manufacturer. You know, I wonder if this is a spinoff from what was said at the end of the book. I don’t have a copy of the book with me, but I think I remember Fitch telling Marlee that there was going to be a big trial where they were suing a gun manufacturer in New Orleans. THen, Marlee said, We’ll be there. I also noticed that the movie is just called Runaway Jury and the book is called “The Runaway Jury”. Just a thought…
I figure they changed it to a gun manufacturer for a number of reasons:
1)It’s been some time since a tobacco trial made big news, but there’s fresh controversy over suing gun companies. This change would make it more current.
2)By making the plantiff’s husband be shot to death instead of dying of lung cancer, the couple could be young and pretty, and the husband could leave behind a six-year-old son.
3)The filmmakers were able to show the husband’s violent end.
Computer Guru, the movie did stick to the book’s plot for the most part, so it’s not as though it’s a “spinoff.” What ResIpsaLoquitor refers to in the spoiler did happen in the movie, though.
One thing that troubles me that I don’t think was addressed in the movie and I don’t remember being addressed in the book:
How did Nicholas Easter get a jury summons and then work himself into the jury? I mean, I got the idea that he moved to a different city every time it was announced that there would be a tobacco/gun trial there soon. But how did he ensure himself to get a summons, and later make the jury? Especially since lightning struck at least twice.
Sorry kids and Grisham fans. The movie sucks. It’s a huge wasted opportunity. It’s got lots of great actors, but they’ve got nothing to talk about. There’s a manufactured scene (hell, the whole thing is manufactured!) in the men’s room where Hackman and Hoffman speechify at each other. That should have been gold, but it just looks desperate. These guys were itching to chew some scenery, and the audience was looking forward to prop mastication, but they’ve got nothing to talk about! Nada. Their characters are little more than cardboard cutouts, and any time anyone builds up steam (like Hoffman’s cross examination of the gun manufacturer CEO), the crappy editing loses the essence of the performance. I mean, come on–you’ve got great actors doing their thing. Why not just put the damned camera on them and let them go at it? Instead, the courtroom scene is cut up into what the director might have thought was some kind of neo-Goddard impressionism that is really just a few contextless close ups of people screaming–the cinematic equivilent of the A-Team “busy hands” sequence. The movie’s most satisfying scene is when The Great Cusak trashes a car with a metal bar.
And talk about plot holes–the biggest one is right off the bat. IANAL, but what counsel in his right fucking mind is going to allow that crap to go on? The minute you get a frikkin’ post card that says “jury for sale!” in the courtroom, you move for a mistrial if for no other reason that it would be cheaper to empanel another jury than to get in a bidding war over the verdict.
ResIpsaLoquitor,
I had the same question. I came up with these two possibilities:
-
They knew that Fitch would be spying on Rohr and would try to spy on them. They needed to keep up a front.
-
The reason for the con was their belief that there would never be a successful suit against the gun companies. Also, they could only try this con once. They rationalized that the money from Rohr would be better spent on their hometown then on futile court cases.
Of course, the real reason was to fake out the audience.
Lisa-go-Blind,
He said that he always did something (voter registration?) that usually got him on the jury roles. Beyond that it was luck of the draw. Are there any jurisdictions that allow people to pick the dates that they want to be in the jury pool? In New York, you can ask to be called at a later date, but you don’t get to pick the date. (If I remember correctly.)
Sorry,
I meant to hit preview, not submit, so I could put spoiler boxes in the post above. :smack:
I loved the book, it’s my favorite Grisham novel. I think I would hate the movie, so I am going to give it a skip, if no no other reason than from the change of defendants from tobacco to gun manufacturers.
Hey, I really liked the movie. I think it’s very much worth seeing, especially if you’ve read the book (it’s the only Grisham I’ve read, by the way).
Sir Prize, sorry, that explanation doesn’t cut it for me. It isn’t as though there are only 11 other people in the city of Biloxi (or New Orleans) who have registered to vote.
I was wrong about what I said above about them saying something about gun manufactoring.
Fitch asked the same question that you did in your spoiler. I don’t think they actually answered that. It would be interesting to know though.
[spoiler]I seem to recall that in the book, it was suggested that Easter hacked into the court’s computers to put his name on the potential jurors list. Then he’d keep going to trials until he finally made onto jury.
In fact, IIRC, at one trial that Fitch looked at once they were on to him, he wasn’t on the list at the courtroom, but he had a summons so they put in the jury pool.[/spoiler]
Yeah, I remember them saying that now. I just got finished with the book and I can’t remember some of these important details
In the book, it’s never exactly explained how Nicholas made it into all three jury pools, but there is an intimation of some nuancing of computer systems, to be certain.
The main reason for the switch of industries from tobacco to guns is in part of the plot that may have been subsumed in the movie that’s spelled out fairly well in the book – the first big verdict for a plaintiff opens the floodgates, and that was what Nicholas was trying to do. When the book was written, there had never been a big pro-plaintiff verdict in a tobacco case, but there has been in the interim between the book’s publication and the movie’s production. There hasn’t, to date, been a plaintiff victory in a gun case, so the movie was on safe ground there.
The thing that really boggles my mind is the change of venue from Biloxi to New Orleans. Biloxi is a great place for a product liability suit, as well explained in the book, because of favorable laws and historically, notoriously generous juries. New Orleans is not known as a plaintiff’s haven. Biloxi made sense from that standpoint as well as the ability to generate the characters and circumstances that popped up in the book. New Orleans is merely window dressing, it doesn’t move the plot the way Biloxi does in the book. Another good reason to avoid this flick.
Ok. I guess they were trying to bring it to date, but what’s wrong with putting the setting back then. I guess it ruins the plot.
I’ve read that the producers were also concerned that the “tobacco on trial” drama had already been done, and arguably better, with films like The Insider.