I have just now seen this 12-year old movie for the first time, and it seems incredibly dated. I liked the acting of the first-string cast-- among others, Gene Hackman as the totally amoral jury fixer, John Cusack and the adorable Rachel Weisz as the couple scheming secretly on several levels (along with lesser performances by future "Entourage" star Jeremy Piven and Dustin Hoffman adopting a sweet lil' Nawlins accent)--and it is a moderately compelling courtroom drama (not nearly as emotionally compelling as "The Verdict", though).
The whole notion of the movie today seems incredibly idealistic today, though. The idea of this movie is that gun manufacturers (in this case, of a semi-automatic rifle) can be held responsible in a civil suit for the crimes committed by a purchaser of the gun.
I have seen the case made that there is a product liability case to be made against manufacturers. They are selling a product which causes harm to others due to the nature of the product's manufacture--like tobacco, say, which has had to pay out mega-billions for making a product that is inherently unsafe. Unfortunately, this argument tends to fall short because, in fact, guns (and I am speaking of semi- automatics, and handguns, not hunting rifles) do exactly what they were made to do: maim and kill people. This is not an unintended side effect of the product, as the medical harm from tobacco and alcohol could be argued to be. This is an argument that is made in the movie, and from a legal standpoint, it is hard to say that the product itself was shown to be defective in any way, though its marketing was certainly deplorable.
Instead--and you will find this in the comments about this movie on this website--the argument is no longer about the inherent value or dysfunction of widespread gun ownership (not in any way related to hunting, or to belonging to any kind of legal militia, as the Second Amendment qualifies the right it specifies); it has buried itself into the question of whether as a society we can control who buys guns and whether we can control the actions of those who sell those guns.
Obviously, the fact is that we cannot. We see the truth--in terms of unhinged gun-crazed nuts killing multiple people--dozens of times a year. Most of the arguments for handgun/semi-automatic gun ownership (except for the dubious premise of their being "for sport only", in which case they wouldn't really need to own them, as they could leave them under lock and key at a gun range or borrow ones there, as one would do at an archery range) ultimately rely upon an alleged need for self-defense, which simply proves the point at the beginning of this paragraph, as in a civilized society we would be able to rely on the forces of order to keep us safe. Many countries do that successfully, but we cannot.
So, I have to end up by dismissing the good intentions of this film as sentimental idealism with no basis in today's society.
The whole notion of the movie today seems incredibly idealistic today, though. The idea of this movie is that gun manufacturers (in this case, of a semi-automatic rifle) can be held responsible in a civil suit for the crimes committed by a purchaser of the gun.
I have seen the case made that there is a product liability case to be made against manufacturers. They are selling a product which causes harm to others due to the nature of the product's manufacture--like tobacco, say, which has had to pay out mega-billions for making a product that is inherently unsafe. Unfortunately, this argument tends to fall short because, in fact, guns (and I am speaking of semi- automatics, and handguns, not hunting rifles) do exactly what they were made to do: maim and kill people. This is not an unintended side effect of the product, as the medical harm from tobacco and alcohol could be argued to be. This is an argument that is made in the movie, and from a legal standpoint, it is hard to say that the product itself was shown to be defective in any way, though its marketing was certainly deplorable.
Instead--and you will find this in the comments about this movie on this website--the argument is no longer about the inherent value or dysfunction of widespread gun ownership (not in any way related to hunting, or to belonging to any kind of legal militia, as the Second Amendment qualifies the right it specifies); it has buried itself into the question of whether as a society we can control who buys guns and whether we can control the actions of those who sell those guns.
Obviously, the fact is that we cannot. We see the truth--in terms of unhinged gun-crazed nuts killing multiple people--dozens of times a year. Most of the arguments for handgun/semi-automatic gun ownership (except for the dubious premise of their being "for sport only", in which case they wouldn't really need to own them, as they could leave them under lock and key at a gun range or borrow ones there, as one would do at an archery range) ultimately rely upon an alleged need for self-defense, which simply proves the point at the beginning of this paragraph, as in a civilized society we would be able to rely on the forces of order to keep us safe. Many countries do that successfully, but we cannot.
So, I have to end up by dismissing the good intentions of this film as sentimental idealism with no basis in today's society.