Me and WotN caught up, over the weekend, with Runaway Jury. It’s kind of Sidney Lumet territory, but a few decades on. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Some others will, and some others won’t. It contains some definite ‘as ifs’ which could alienate your affections. But it’s a good yarn and it moves along.
Anyway, the best of it is when two of the central protagonists, as played by Gene Hackman and Dustin Hoffman, come face to face – in the men’s room, where else? – two opposed temperaments, moralities, world views; Hackman the Prince of Darkness if ever there was, Hoffman a man of Henry Fonda-level rectitude, standing for, and standing up for, the basic decency of the common people, American democratic values. A cliché as may be, but it’s one of those scenes, and you just know this as it starts: two veterans of the game, both packed with talent and experience, and working out against each another. Steiger and Brando in the back of the cab it isn’t. What can ever touch that? But think Nicholson and Cruise in A Few Good Men, or De Niro and Pacino in Heat, and you’re there or thereabouts. I’ll see the movie again some time for that scene.
