JUST CAUSE. Directed by Arne Glimcher; written by Jeb Stuart and Peter Stone; produced by Lee Rich, Arne Glimcher and Steve Perry for Warner Bros. Starring Sean Connery, Laurence Fishhurne and Blair Underwood. Rated R.
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Just Cause will give you just cause for nightmares, if you're as suggestible as I am when it comes to movies. It's not great cinema, but it's good enough for a first-class, short-term scare.
The main reason it's so effective is the excellent cast. The script, on its own, has too many holes, contrivances and mixed messages to be that successful. But when you have people like Connery, Fishburne, Underwood and Ed Harris turning on the juice, you don't really need a good writer.
Connery's character is in some ways the least satisfying. He plays a Harvard law professor and opponent of the death penalty who gets talked into going over the case of Bobby Earl Ferguson (Underwood) who is on death row in Florida. The crime was the brutal rape and murder of a little white girl, and Ferguson confessed to it. But he says the confession was beaten out of him.
Connery is as solid and reassuring as you would expect him to be throughout most of the movie, but towards the end, as the story springs surprise after surprise on us, his character loses focus.
The other characters in Just Cause are more complex and interesting (and, also, much creepier) than the professor. Fishburne, who always brings more to his roles than you have a right to expect, does the same here. But his small-town sheriff, with ironic echoes of so many bigoted white lawmen, is pretty riveting to start with.
Underwood, who was such an attractive straight-arrow on TV's "L.A. Law," shows a sinister side here to great effect. And Harris, who is one of the most versatile actors around, puts chills on your goosebumps as a raving psychopath reminiscent of Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs.
With a better-written script, Just Cause could have been as good a movie as Silence was. But as it is, in spite of its undeniable shock value, it's not in that league at all.
It is, however, almost as gruesome, both in what it shows the audience and in what it leaves to our imaginations. So squeamish or impressionable moviegoers need to give it a wide berth. Along about midnight the night after I saw it, I sure wish I had!
March 1, 1995