A Time To Kill (1996) Critic Reviews

There's no question the movie's entertaining. But the blatantly schematic depictions of black and white, liberal and hawk, and other tiresome dichotomies turn A Time to Kill into the moral equivalent of a cockfight.Read the full review

Joel Schumacher, the director of "Falling Down," "The Client" and "Batman Forever," has a strong feel for this kind of glossy pop entertainment and a way of integrating social issues without sacrificing narrative drive.Read the full review

If the film doesn't add up to a cogent legal argument, neither does it have trouble delivering 2 hours and 20 minutes' worth of sturdy, highly charged drama.Read the full review

In his screen version, Schumacher does a flamboyant job of staging the book without showing the slightest interest in what it's about. Granted, Grisham's original is no masterpiece; it's beach reading, but it deserves credit for addressing its subject with some conviction and integrity.Read the full review

Then again, it's worth noting that this Hollywood production is actually saying something, rather than just churning out eye-popping special effects while relying on a regurgitated plot.Read the full review

A Time to Kill embodies all that is wrong with Hollywood attempts to address important issues, raising questions of race and justice but refusing to deal with them on anything but the most simplified, manipulative moral terms.Read the full review

Oblivious to niceties like subtlety, plausibility and discretion, it rushes heedlessly toward its destination of audience arousal. Like a flood, the impact is undeniable but it's not something everyone will want to get in the way of. [24Jul1996 Pg. F.01]Read the full review

A slick, synthetic, self-important drama that thinks it is saying more than it is simply because of its subject matter.Read the full review

A handsome but riotously cluttered melodrama with maybe 145 subplots, it's the latest and least in a soulless string of preordained multiplex hits from the John Grisham warehouse. [24Jul1996 Pg. 10.B]Read the full review