The Juror (1996)

Directed by Brian Gibson. Starring Demi Moore, Alec Baldwin, Anne Heche, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, James Gandolfini, Lindsay Crouse, Matt Craven, Michael Rispoli, Tony Lo Bianco, Matthew Cowles, Michael Constantine. [R]

Untalented experimental sculptor Moore becomes a juror for a trial targeting Mafioso Lo Bianco, but she has a hard time staying impartial when slick psycho Baldwin terrorizes her and threatens her son if she doesn’t convince the rest of the jury to acquit. A string of astonishingly (and increasingly) preposterous scenarios apparently designed to raise stakes and lower IQ’s at every turn; it becomes just plain absurd long before the climax, which is set in a Guatemalan temple because, sure, why not? Baldwin could do this sort of simmering menace in his sleep by this point, and Moore is forced into unconvincing character contortions so that she can seem afraid and vulnerable one moment and steely and self-assured the next. Shamelessly rips off an earlier bad movie with a heap of similarities (Trial by Jury), but by balance of sheer stupidity, this one is somehow even worse; any defense counsel arguing that it’s based off a book by George Dawes Green should rethink that strategy since it was published in the interim between the two pictures. Produced by Irwin Winkler.

31/100