THE CHAMBER
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1996 Scott Renshaw
Grade: C- // Skip It
(Universal)
Director: James Foley. Screenplay: William Goldman, Chris Reese. Producers: John Davis, Brian Grazer, Ron Howard. Starring: Chris O'Donnell, Gene Hackman, Faye Dunaway, Lela Rochon, Robert Prosky.
MPAA Rating: R (violence, profanity) Running Time: 113 minutes.
Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
In the adaptation of John Grisham's THE CHAMBER, Gene Hackman plays Sam Cayhall, a dyed-in-the-wool, Confederate-flag-waving Klansman on death row after being convicted of a 1967 racially-motivated bombing which left two children dead. His grandson Adam Hall (Chris O'Donnell), a Chicago attorney, has arrived in Mississippi in an attempt to pull off a last-minute appeal even though prospects appear dim. As the film nears its climax, Sam makes the long walk to the death watch cell past other prisoners, and one by one we see and hear them wishing Sam well. This includes several black prisoners, one of whom offers Sam a peace sign.
I may be no expert in the brotherhood of death row, but I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that there may be no love lost between black inmates and an inmate who uses a certain "n" word with unapologetic frequency. Yet THE CHAMBER depends on such warm fuzziness when it comes to matters of race, because its thinking is equally fuzzy. Sam Cayhall may be Klan, the script suggests, but he's good people; after all, he tells his black guard (erstwhile pro baseball and football star Bo Jackson) that he doesn't mean it personally when he refers to "your people," and writes a letter to the mother of the boys who died in the explosion. More to the point, as Adam contends in his appeal, Sam had no choice but to be a racist because of how he was raised. It is one of THE CHAMBER's many bits of convenient ignorance that Adam makes his plea with absolute earnestness, despite the fact that his own father suffered and struggled not to turn out like Sam.
Of course, it may be that Chris O'Donnell knew no other way to make that speech, because earnestness is the only emotional pitch in which he seems capable of performing. THE CHAMBER may toss around ideas about racism, the politics of criminal justice and corruption in high places -- all pet peeves of Grisham's, if his oeuvre is any indication -- but ultimately it really comes down to the face-offs between Hackman and O'Donnell, and man oh man but O'Donnell is wrestling out of his weight class. There may be no more inconsequential actor in American films than Chris O'Donnell, a pretty boy who makes you want to re-evaluate Keanu Reeves as a multi-shaded thespian. Watching O'Donnell try to drag an inner life out of Adam Hall is like watching a puppy try to play Macbeth.
Then there is Gene Hackman, an actor with the ability to make you sit through nonsense like this just for the chance to watch him do his thing. In many of his early scenes he is simply marvelous, tearing into Adam with the practiced disdain of a man who has spent his life figuring out why everyone else is responsible for his own misery. His best moment comes in a scene where he describes to Adam the death of another inmate in the gas chamber, the horror of his likely fate sinking in with every word. It is a really little more than a piece of anti-death penalty propaganda, but Hackman sells it with such conservation of emotion that it doesn't feel as obvious as it should. He makes that speech a statement about the feelings of his character, which is the mark of a superior actor: the words he speaks are his.
It is a shame then that Sam is obliged to turn into just the grandfatherly sort he mocked Adam for believing him to be. Films about condemned killers have been all the rage lately, but THE CHAMBER is both the most weightless and the most subtly offensive of them all, because it is so disingenuous in its portrayal of Sam. As the film progresses, it seems that we are supposed to feel sorry for Sam, a man raised on racism who has been set up to take the fall for a crime in which he may not have been the key participant. At the same time, we are aware that he murdered the father of one of his son's friends, a black man, in cold blood. The fact that we are expected to root for Sam to get his appeal because he may not have committed the _particular_ murder for which he was convicted is enough to make you shiver when you think of Sam's line that the Klan "should have stuck to the niggers." THE CHAMBER is a film which poses at social consciousness, then casts a black actress (Lela Rochon) in the female lead only to strip the character of her romantic relationship with Adam. Gene Hackman is interested only in making Sam Cayhall human; THE CHAMBER wants to make him lovable, to use racism as an incendiary plot device then shrug it off as Sam makes his last long walk, ready to do everything but shout "Power to the people!"
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 chamber pots: 4.
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