Watched on Amazon Prime

With his second John Grisham adaptation after "The Client", Joel Schumacher has created an extremely double-edged sword, in which its formal class and entertainment value are barely reconcilable disproportionate to its manipulative, terribly striking nature, ultimately overrunning its overemphasised humanity with a more than borderline double standard.

Despite its long running time (about 150 minutes) in the sultry powder keg atmosphere, the Southern judicial thriller is never the least bit tedious, thoroughly gripping and very densely presented, but it conveys an extremely strange image that can hardly be surpassed in terms of black-and-white painting (not only with regard to skin colour). It is often mentioned that the (guilty, of course!) Carl Lee would only sit in the dock because he is black. Seriously? We still have a long way to go in terms of equality and racism is a poison that flows in way to many veins, but this is going more than a touch too far. After all, it's not a "trial" in Cletus and Eugene's self-made justice hut with the gallows right next to the latrine. This disturbs enormously and multiplies in the finale to complete incomprehension when suddenly vigilante justice is presented as a completely legitimate means, as in the wildest times in the West. A man, his gun and his right.

Some acts may always remain understandable from a human point of view, but the way the film deals with them in its consequence is absurd and completely misguided. Here, there is no differentiation, no weighing, and all sides of this delicate issue are handled with the necessary care. Actually bad. Only then again in many respects (apart from this nonsense), one can hardly deny it, well done. There remains only the middle, let everyone decide for himself how much he weights.