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Bruce Beresford must have a kid in medical school, or else he was recovering from some over-ripe potato salad when he decided to film this questionable script, whose only pedigree is the guy who wrote the story for The Rock. Otherwise he might have bothered finding out that the whole premise only holds true in some bizarro world where Republicans read “Doonesbury,” attorneys always know what they’re talking about (or, at least, screenwriters always know what attorneys are talking about), and Gwyneth Paltrow is a top-scoring power forward for the Houston Comets in the WNBA. But Double Jeopardy was #1 at the boxoffice last week, so what do I know (everybody who came was probably hoping, due to the title and an R rating, that maybe Alex Trebek would get naked).
Ashley Judd plays a wealthy Seattle wife whose husband fakes his death and frames her for his murder so he can escape financial scandal and run off with the leggy nanny. But he must not have seen her last movie, Kiss the Girls, where she spent almost as much time pounding the heavy bag in her tae-bo class as she did dribbling fake glycerine down her cleavage, or he would have realized she wouldn’t give up so easily. She goes to prison, where a former lawyer locked up for killing her husband explains that, when she gets out, she can track hubby down and nail his head to the coffee table and get away with it since she’s already been convicted of killing him. (WRONG. The law considers stabbing him on a sailboat, which she supposedly did, and nailing his head to the furniture, which she’d like to do, two completely different crimes. I know, because I saw Alan Dershowitz talking about it on CNN, and I trust the guy who got Claus von Bulow acquitted more than I do the guy who wrote The Rock.)
She’s paroled (after just six years -- her conviction must have been for Murder Lite, or else she got time off for good looks and lots of situps), and while tracking down her ex-, winds up pursued by her parole officer, another turn as an indefatigable instrument of justice by Tommy Lee Jones. You know, I take back that comment about Bruce Beresford. If anybody must have needed some quick cash, for gambling debts or new Nikes or cubic zirconia orthodonture or whatever, it must have been Tommy, since he should know better.
Many movies require a suspension of disbelief to enjoy properly. At Double Jeopardy, which runs literally and figuratively all over the map before reaching its unimaginative climax in New Orleans, they should hand out ball-peen hammers so you can just hit yourself in the forehead before the opening credits start. D+
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