Last night the lady and I rented Beyond A Reasonable Doubt (the 2009 Peter Hyams version, not the Fritz Lang original). The best aspects of this film, and I can say this with a great degree of certainty, are the car chases and explosions. Also, Orlando Jones was good in his small role.
That's where the positives end. And I am being generous in calling the action scenes positive. I really don't like to completely trash a film unless I find it offensively bad (Pearl Harbor, for example), and Beyond A Reasonable Doubt isn't that terrible. It's just not very good. At all. No mystery or intrigue. No character development whatsoever. The editing is very poor in spots, and the screenplay sounds like it was written by someone who just graduated middle school. I would say the acting is bad too, but I really don't think the actors are to blame. The greatest actors in the world couldn't have done anything with this script.
The film is about a pretty boy journalist who "suspects" his state's District Attorney of being crooked. No reason for this suspicion; it's just a hunch. Said pretty boy then sets out to prove the D.A. has been fabricating evidence in murder trials by implicating himself in a murder and videotaping the falsification. I may not be able to relate the absurdity of this scheme here, but if you see the film, I have confidence you'll recognize it immediately. Oh, and then the pretty boy falls in love with a prettier girl. We know this because they say "I love you" in a two-minute breakfast scene. Apparently that's enough to make us care about this relationship. After this a lot of predictable and melodramatic things happen, and the film ends with possibly the most ludicrous "twist" I have ever seen in a movie.
If you were thinking of renting this movie, you could save some time and just watch an episode of "Law & Order."
Well put Zach, you have saved me a rental.
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