Runaway Jury

When Marlee is sitting at an outdoor cafe with Wendell, Wendell's shirt collar is repeatedly neatly tucked/sloppily sticking out between shots.

When Fitch is sitting in the bar towards the end of the movie, the amount of drink in his glass increases between shots after Easter and Marlee leave the bar.

When Nick is scribbling on the jury menu form, rain is seen outside the window.

When he throws the form outside a few minutes later and it's picked up by Marlee, the rain has stopped and the grass is dry.

In the beginning, a photographer is shooting Nick from a second-floor balcony.

However, the black & white stills produced are shot at street level.

When Rankin Fitch meets the gun company guy who is shooting clay pigeons, near the end of the conversation, the gun company guy starts to put on his safety glasses and says "Pull" before he has time to shoot, but in the next shot, he is fully prepared, and hits the target in the air.

When Fitch meets with the gun company man who is shooting clay discs, near the end of the conversation the man loads his gun and closes it.

In the very next shot it's broken open then switches back to closed in the shot after that.

In the first scene when the defense and plaintiff first walk into the courtroom, the defense sets the rigged briefcase on the table as he walks to the table.

In the very next shot they show a close-up of him setting the briefcase in place from a sitting position.

The footage from the video surveillance Nick Easter had set up in his apartment shows a different replay of what actually happened when he walked in on the guy spying on his personal effects.

The female bailiff says she "baked these muffins myself", but she is clearly holding a tray of brownies.

Nick Easter smashes the burglar's windshield, but when he backs up the windshield is whole again.

As the funds are being received at the Cayman Island Bank, the issuing bank name and address is filled in as "Cayman Islands Reserve Bank", however the printout of the transfer has issuing bank name and address as "Bahamian Reserver Bank" in Nassau, Bahamas.

When Fitch is viewing a video of Nick, we see it paused with embedded timecode paused along with the video.

the last two numbers (:39) indicate the frames, not seconds (you can tell this by the speed at which the numbers run and the fact the "tens" number never passes 3) when in play mode.

Frame rates for NTSC (north American video) is 30 frames per second, anywhere else in the world it varies, mostly at 25 frames/sec in most of Europe, but no video is more than 30 frames/sec.

When Rohr has hired Lawrence, he steps in his car.

Lawrence is standing next to the front tire.

In the long shot of Rohr pulling out, Lawrence is standing a few feet back and has turned around.

When Fitch meets the gun company men, a chessboard is shown.

The game is already started (the white Queen and the white King are in wrong start position).

In the next shots, after some seconds, the chessboard shows the chess pieces in the start position (and the white Queen is finally in the correct square).

When Marlee supposedly jots down her e-mail address for Fitch on the street car, she uses about 2 or 3 pen strokes, which is barely enough for her to write "@" much less an actual e-mail address.

Rohr initially describes the shooter in the office rampage as a day trader, then as a broker, then as a day trader again.

When Nick Easter comes down the steps and the old man (Mr Polaski) is cleaning out the water pump, the pump is clear.

Moments later, the pump has green weed over it.

When Fitch grabs hold of Marlee on the trolley, the check changes from his left to right hand multiple times.

When Marlee calls Fitch at home and increases her demand to $15 million, he slams the phone's receiver down.

The receiver's cord can be seen not to be connected to the phone.

During attorney Rohr's closing argument in court he addresses the gun company boss "chief CEO".

The word "chief" is redundant since CEO stands for "chief executive officer".

When the investigator is in Gardner, Indiana speaking to Marlee's mother, the spires of Crescent City Connection, New Orleans are in the background.

In Nick's first scene he opens a piece of mail at his apartment's mailbox.

It is addressed to him at "1619 Chartres St.

" Later, when his info is brought up on Rankin Fitch's computer screen his address is listed as "617 Chartres St.

" Near the end of the movie, when Doyle is driving a car and talking to Fitch on his cell phone, the antenna is shown in the extended position, but then is retracted by the time he finishes the call and hangs up.

A witness testifies that the Esplanade Mall would never be robbed because a police station is right across the street.

This is wrong.

There is no Jefferson Parish police station near the Esplanade Mall.

When the menus for the jury's lunch are being handed out, the policewoman enters the room with a stack of menus in her hand and she just starts distributing them.

In the next shot, it is shown that everyone in the room has their own menus in their hands.

How did she distribute them within one second to everyone? The American Flag is on the wrong side of Judge Harkin, as it is accorded the place of honor, always positioned to its own right, or the speaker's right and the audience's left, according to the United States Flag Code.

- PLOTAfter the anti-gun juror goes on his tirade, Nick Easter makes a joke.

In reality, a tirade like that could actually force the judge to dismiss the entire perspective pool, because the pool would then be considered tainted since the witnessed the tirade.

When the sum of 15 million dollars is counted during the bank transfer, the number exceeds 90 million right before it hits 15 million.

When the jury enters the court to give the verdict, Millee Dupree enters the juror's box twice.

When Nick attacks Fitch's man in the car he swings and smashes the windshield and passenger side window.

As the man backs up, the rear window is intact but as he pulls away the rear window is shattered long before Nick throws the pipe at the back of the car.

Nick and Marlee meet in a voodoo shop where the Creole shopkeeper only speaks French.

The movie conveys the image of the City still being mostly French speaking, but the French-only speaking Creole population in New Orleans is practically extinct.

Based on a John Grisham novel, Wendell Rohr (Dustin Hoffman) is a torts lawyer suing a gun manufacturer. Opposing his is lawyer Durwood Cable (Bruce Davison), but his real opposition may just be the jury consultant Rankin Fitch (Gene Hackman).

I finished the book recently. And frankly, with so many characters and side plots, I got a bit confused about some things.

Slow and dull, lacking any kind of tension or stakes. Feels like a classic late '90s thriller - all style and no substance.

One major strength of a John Grisham novel is his use of the anti-hero. Many of his books, including The Runaway Jury, have no good guys and no noble cause for which the underdog is fighting.

It helped the filmmakers that the book itself is somehow subpar in the Grisham catalogue. It's hard to believe that Gene Hackman was on the edge of retirement in that period.

Whenever I see that a movie has four different writers, I can usually expect an uneven result. "Runaway Jury" is a case in point.

The hero in the film is manipulative, he is a confidence trickster, and he cannot be trusted. But he uses these negative traits to, as the story goes, turn a widow into a fabulously rich woman.

I had high hopes going into this movie, because the book was absolutely incredible. In the book, the antagonist was the cigarette industry, responsible for nearly half a million deaths a year by their product.

The most dangerous movies are the ones that take themselves seriously. The scenario is pathetic: so much stupidity you rarely find.