The Chamber (1996)
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1996 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): *
Racism, anti-Semitism, the Klan, capital punishment, vast conspiracy, bankable stars and a famous author. What more could the viewing public want? Believability would be nice. Absent that, perhaps a mystery that goes somewhere. What they get instead is balderdash.
In a film that has only one even mildly interesting performance and where the other characters are created out of cardboard, it helps if you approach THE CHAMBER with as low an expectation as possible to avoid disappointment. Having read "The Chamber" and all of the other John Grisham books, I entered the theater not expecting a lot, but it was considerable worse than I feared.
In the hands of director James Foley and screenwriters William Goldman and Chris Reese, they manage to take the least of enjoyable author Grisham's novels and excise its only strength which is the mystery. Although they do leave an outline of the mystery, what is left is like a maze where someone has erased most of the dividing lines. The film plays like it was a four hour movie where all of the key sections have been purged to get it down to size. Only the dull parts and the sensation portions have been left intact. The characters don't relate to each other. Rather than chemistry between them, what we get is a string of serial monologues masquerading as a script.
There are many fine pictures that discuss the subjects in THE CHAMBER in a responsible and enlightening manner. Foley's vision here is limited to the exploitive. He takes controversial subjects and taunts the audience with racial and religious epithets solely for gratuitous shock value.
In easily the worse performance of his career, Chris O'Donnell is badly miscast as lawyer Adam Hall. Adam is the grandson of famous racist and KKK bomber Sam Cayhall (Gene Hackman), and Adam comes back to town to save his granddaddy from execution. Ever reliable Hackman does the only real acting in the show, but even he is not as good as he usually is. Directors and writers do make a difference.
As the story opens, Cayhall is going to die in 28 days unless Adam can get him off with an appeal or a pardon. Since Cayhall admits to killing two innocent boys, Adam has his work cut out for him.
The South in THE CHAMBER is even more stereotyped than most Grisham novels. White society is dichotomized into rich people who live in white mansion with big columns and the rest who are rednecks living in shacks. They are almost all racist except for the hero lawyer. The KKK, of course, is omnipresent. Caricature is effective to a point, but THE CHAMBER is way over the line. Cliche follows cliche in an unending drive for manipulating the audience.
When Adam arrives at the ante-bellum mansion of Cayhall's daughter Lee Bowen (Faye Dunaway), she tells him, "Pretty good for poor white trash. How well I'll be accepted after everybody finds out I'm Hitler's daughter is another thing." She later tells him that, "We come from a long line of hate."
"Save me. Your don't look like you can save a turkey from Thanksgiving," remarks Cayhall when he meets his new lawyer Adam. In the most ridiculous aspect of the story, Cayhall spews out a constant steam of racial and anti-Semitic epithets, but the black guards are quite fond of him. Sure.
Soon Adam finds out Gov. McCallister (David Marshall Grant) was somehow a partner in Cayhall's criminal activities. Moreover, the governor hints that if Cayhall will shut up, he will pardon him. Imagine that, a government leader hinting of pardons if his partner in crime will just keep quiet. Couldn't happen in America.
The governor's attractive female aide Nora Stark (Lela Rochon) tells Adam, "You're in Mississippi now - land of the secrets. There are bodies buried everywhere." The governor also suggest she sleep with Adam so she can find out what he knows.
Cayhall keeps wanting Adam to stay away from the conspiracy admonishing him, "If you spend half as much time trying to be a lawyer instead of trying to be Dick Tracy, I might not be dead in five days." I will not discuss the ending other than to say it is as manipulative as the rest of the film.
Ian Baker's cinematography is dull and lifeless. For a major motion picture, it is strikingly ugly. The music by Carter Burwell sounds like it was lifted from an old B movie.
I left the theater with many questions. How could they make such a incredible mistake as to cast Chris O'Donnell as the lawyer? Why was the script such an insult to the viewer's intelligence? And the biggest question of all, why did I stay, hoping in vain that the film would somehow get better?
THE CHAMBER runs forever at 1:51 thanks to the sloppy editing of Mark Warner. It is rated R for some violence and some bad language, and the film would probably be acceptable for teenagers. I hated the show, and I recommend people of all ages avoid it. Only out of respect for Gene Hackman do I award it a single *. My immediate reaction when I left the theater was not even to rate it that high.
**** = One of the top few films of this or any year. A must see film. *** = Excellent show. Look for it. ** = Average movie. Kind of enjoyable. * = Poor show. Don't waste your money. 0 = One of the worst films of this or any year. Totally unbearable.
REVIEW WRITTEN ON: October 18, 1996
Opinions expressed are mine and not meant to reflect my employer's.
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