The Chamber (1996)

Directed by James Foley. Starring Chris O’Donnell, Gene Hackman, Faye Dunaway, Lela Rochon, David Marshall Grant, Robert Prosky, Raymond J. Barry, Bo Jackson, Harve Presnell, Nicholas Pryor, Millie Perkins. [R]

Earnest young lawyer O’Donnell heads south to try and win a reprieve for his grandfather he’s never met, a bigoted Death Row inmate (Hackman) convicted of killing two children with a bomb. Adequately-staged but underwhelming drama based on a John Grisham novel (the fifth adaptation of his work in four years, and the first to flop at the box office) feels designed for dramatic fireworks that simply are not there; the frequent swell of the musical score (especially during a courtroom speech) suggests that the audience is supposed to feel something for the lawyer’s plight and the condemned’s fate, but it never makes a case for why. The turning gears of the plot are rarely credible—the scene where O’Donnell just wanders into a gathering of white supremacists apparently wanting to confront an old partner of Hackman’s is implausible enough to earn jeers—and the emotional connections forged between Hackman and his disaffected family members are unearned, even bewildering. O’Donnell is flat and unconvincing while Hackman strains to give dimension to a rather one-note character (the hatred is believable, the remorse far less so); despite all the implications of Rochon’s character—and her ultimate importance to the story—her role is drastically underwritten and performed.

30/100