Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Matrixiole Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

Patience Watson One of those movie experiences that is so good it makes you realize you've been grading everything else on a curve.

Roxie The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

inspectors71 Anyone who has never seen a thriller, a court drama, a story about serial killers, an anti-death penalty plot, scenery being gobbled by Ed Harris, the Everglades, or a movie unsure enough of itself that it has to front load the whole thing with a bunch of big and medium names will find Just Cause absolutely riveting.Oh, JC wasn't bad (except for Sean Connery looking a bit bewildered). In my head I started listing off movies I've seen that Just Cause copies. I only got frustrated with this derivative thing when Kate Capshaw drives a car over a draw bridge, the car hits hard, the air bags stay put, and the car goes on its merry way with no discernible damage.Just Cause works because it doesn't stretch our credulity, but that was a sloppy and stupid moment, and it didn't help. If you've got 102 minutes to blow, and you don't have any problem with the plot and the language and gore and the we've-seen-this-before, you have a movie night in store.

FlashCallahan Bobby Earl is facing the electric chair for the murder of a young girl. Eight years after the crime he calls in Paul Armstrong, a professor of law, to help prove his innocence. Armstrong quickly uncovers some overlooked evidence to present to the local police, but they aren't interested - Bobby was their killer......Its strange to think that Connery had very few films left in him when this was released, there were a few prolific ones, The Rock, LXG, Entrapment, but it's really strange that he decided to this, because he doesn't really add anything to the film.Its Fishbourne, and a brilliant Harris, that make this film standout, and compared to them, Connery is left in the stands watching the world go by,which is a shame, because he's usually a wonderful screen presence.The plot reminds one of those slow burning Bayou thrillers of old, everyone's sweating, wiping their faces, and hiding secrets from one another.But for the most part, its Connery approaching different characters, asking for his motivation, and then ringing up Kate Capshaw to have an argument.The final third involves a car chase, crocodiles, and Scarlett Johanssen, but by the time the big twist is revealed, you feel cheated because its basically turned the twist onto a 360, if you would.Watchable, but pointless, Harris is wonderful...

inkslayer My problem with Just Cause is this: I didn't get a clear understanding as to why Bobby Earl (Blair Underwood) becomes a cold-blooded child killer.Oh yes, Fishburne's character, Sheriff Brown, states that Bobby Earl is "bad," but Sheriff Brown never tells us why. He just has a "feeling." We do learn via dialogue, not action or backstory, that when Bobby Earl was a boy, he was taken from Newark and his drug-addicted mamma and sent to live with his Grandmother in Florida. Is the viewer supposed to surmise that Bobby Earl is bad because he lived in Newark with a drug-addicted mother? If we have to fill in the blanks, then the writer has done a poor job telling his story. Not all kids who live in Newark with drug-addicted parents grow up "bad." Then the other problem I had was when Bobby Earl reveals that he's been castrated. I thought men – like animals – become more docile without their nuts. Yet, after being castrated, Bobby Earl rapes (doesn't leave semen) and viciously fillets a young white girl.I'm no psych major, but Bobby Earl's actions just don't add up; maybe because the writer failed to give us an intelligent equation.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU To fight against the death penalty is a just cause. Everyone who is sane in Europe would think so. In the USA everything is different. The film seems to demonstrate in a first stage that justice can be won against the racist bigot death penalty craving American justice. A young man is freed from death row thanks to a law professor who went back to defense counseling for this particular case. But the film has a sequel. Justice in the USA is entirely governed by the aim of vengeance. Miscarriage of justice is just the same governed by vengeance. One person in the local Public Attorney Offfice has a young man prosecuted on false charges. This Public Attorney's officer drops the charges after a while and the young man walks out free. But he loses his college scholarship and he is castrated by some vengeful people for whom there is never any smoke without a fire. He hides his shame and swears to get his vengeance. But he also needs to satisfy his sexual needs which are more mental than hormonal for sure but even stronger because mental and no longer hormonal and he can only do that with little girls. He apparently teams with another serial killer who is after the same kind of preys. One day the local cops follow their intuition, guided by some vague circumstantial elements in the assassination of a young girl, and they arrest the young chap we are speaking of. They beat him up and interrogate him for 22 hours with nothing but blows and blows and telephone books and guns and Russian roulette. He confesses. Sent to death row, he asks his grandmother to go get the law professor in Massachusetts who is the husband of the Local Public Attorney's representative that had him falsely prosecuted some years ago and the vengeance is on the rails. It will fail but it shows that as soon as one in the line of justice, police work and other security forces steps off the line of absolute legality, some unjust act is done that can ruin even the best accusation case and that can nourish the worst deepest imaginable thirst for vengeance. To charge someone on circumstantial elements is just as bad as to let circumstantial elements ruin the work of the police or of justice. The best intentions on the police side are ruined by some personal involvement and vengeful intention, just as much as the life of a person can be jeopardized by circumstantial elements inflated to the size of evidence, which in its turn will jeopardize the whole case by being just circumstantial, hence easily discardable, with a good lawyer. The film then is a deep reflection on the necessity to respect standards and regulations all along the police and justice line if we don't want to make a mistake, which in its turn of course does not justify the death penalty since anyway it goes against the deepest belief Americans are supposed to have: "We hold these truths to be self-evident , that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." (Declaration of Independence) Life is an unalienable Right that was given to man by his Creator, which means no one but the one who gave it can take it away. Only God can take the life of a person away. The death penalty is the arrogant appropriation of a power that we do not have. Even if we do not evoke God, we cannot justify the death penalty except as an act of vengeance, and here the film shows vengeance is the worst possible motivation in the rendition of justice and in the establishment of public peace. If vengeance is pushed aside there is no other justification for this death penalty. And there can always be a mistake in that pursuit not of Happiness but of vengeance.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID