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High Crimes (2002)
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Reviews Counted:131
Fresh:41
Rotten:90
Average Rating:5/10
Consensus: Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman make this predictable affair watchable.
Rated: PG-13 [See Full Rating] for violence, sexual content and language
Runtime: 1 hr 55 mins
Genre: Dramas
Theatrical Release:Apr 5, 2002 Wide
Box Office: $41,442,009
Synopsis: You live the life you had always pictured: a thriving career, a beautiful house, and most importantly, a wonderful husband. Someone you love and know better than anyone else. But suppose... You live the life you had always pictured: a thriving career, a beautiful house, and most importantly, a wonderful husband. Someone you love and know better than anyone else. But suppose everything you know - everything you trust - about him and your life together may be a lie. For Claire Kubik, that nightmare scenario has become all too real. Claire, a high-powered attorney, and her husband Tom, a successful contractor with his own business, lead the idyllic Marin County life. They're madly in love and planning to have a family. But a random crime - a bungled burglary - at their home triggers a chain of events that shatters their world. Soon after the burglary, FBI agents accost them and, to Claire's shock, arrest Tom. The charge: Under his real name, Ronald Chapman, Tom, as a covert military operative, murdered civilians in El Salvador, and has been a fugitive for the past fifteen years. Claire at first believes these charges must be a case of mistaken identity. But Tom admits he is Ronald Chapman and he was part of a clandestine operation that did result in a massacre for which Tom was blamed. But he assures Claire of his innocence and that the real perpetrators made Tom their fall guy because he alone could identify them as the men who gave and executed the order. Claire prepares to defend her husband in a top-secret military court, where none of the rules she knows so well apply. When a "greenhorn" military attorney, Lt. Embry, is assigned to their case, Claire realizes she needs help from someone who knows these rules - and is willing to break them. She enlists the aid of a "wild card": Charlie Grimes, a former military attorney who relishes the opportunity to take on the very hierarchy that disgraced him years earlier. Squaring off against the formidable military fraternity both in and out of the courtroom, Claire and Grimes gradually begin to uncover what could be a scandalous cover-up perpetrated by one of the most highly decorated and politically connected officers in the Army. Claire must now risk her career and even her life in her quest for the truth. -- © 2002 20th Century Fox [More]
Starring: Ashley Judd, Morgan Freeman, Jim Caviezel, Adam Scott
Starring: Ashley Judd, Morgan Freeman, Jim Caviezel, Adam Scott, Amanda Peet, Bruce Davison, Tom Bower, Juan Carlos Hernandez, Michael Gaston
Director: Carl Franklin
Director: Carl Franklin
Screenwriter: Yuri Zeltser, Cary Bickley
Composer: Graeme Revell
Studio: 20th Century Fox
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Reviews for High Crimes
In a movie like this, if you're not surprised, if you know what's going to happen and you can figure out everything then it ultimately falls flat and that's why it doesn't work for me.
The film is itself a sort of cinematic high crime, one that brings military courtroom dramas down very, very low.
Whenever a couple in a Hollywood film is so happy early on, it is predictable a reversal of fortunes is soon to happen.
Ashley: You are falsely accused, aren't you? Please don't tell me I'm ruining my expensive makeup for nothing.
High Crimes has its moments of chicanery that works intermittingly throughout the plot, but for the most part it's a mere misdemeanor of a military courtroom drama that never really challenges the audience's imagination.
High Crimes goes a long way on old-fashioned star power mixed with a few new twists. Luckily, it doesn't have to go any further.
Consider the film a celluloid litmus test for the intellectual and emotional pedigree of your date and a giant step backward for a director I admire.
It reunites the winning "Kiss the Girls" team of Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman. The chemistry still works.
Loaded with false alarms, shocks, and a few twists, the story wends its way enjoyably toward resolution, assisted by a nicely constructed set of revelations.
Our enjoyment of High Crimes depends entirely on how much we identify with these characters -- our immersion in their lives is precisely what carries us over the large and unsightly wrinkles in the script.
Sinks so low in a poorly played game of absurd plot twists, idiotic court maneuvers and stupid characters that even Freeman can't save it.
Ashley Judd is quickly outdistancing Sandra Bullock for Hollywood's longest streak of bad leading-lady choices.
High Crimes doesn't exactly get a high-five from me, but it doesn't commit any felonies, either. I'll give it 2-3 with time off for good behavior.
The talent in front of and behind the camera can't overcome the boring, derivative script.
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