Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

Why would a man frame himself... for murder? Beyond a Reasonable Doubt is directed by Peter Hyams and Hyams adapts the screenplay from Douglas Morrow's story/screenplay for the 1956 film of the same name. It stars Jesse Metcalfe, Amber Tamblyn, Michael Douglas, Joel David Moore and Orlando Jones. Music is by David Shire and Hyams also tackles cinematography duties. C.J. Nicholas (Metcalfe) is a journalist aiming for high things. He is convinced that high profile lawyer Mark Hunter (Douglas) is corrupting legal issues and sets about proving it... The 1956 film was the great Fritz Lang's last American film, more court drama than being overtly film noir, it was a film well tuned into legalities of its time. Hyams here updates to a modern era setting and it is fanciful - due to the advancements in technology - in the extreme. Of course those things can often be forgivable if the film is well put together and holds some thriller/drama weight. The look of the film is cheap, as in a TV movie look, with the cinematography uninspiring, the young cast members hardly turn in characterisations to care for, while Douglas (who is very good) is surprisingly under used. The story is a fascinating one as per human foibles, and there's a double whammy stroll down twister street that lifts the film to a rewarding closure. But it's still a disappointment, and this even if you haven't seen Lang's far superior 56 film. 6/10

The only thing that’s beyond a reasonable doubt here is this movie’s stupidity. The film opens with District Attorney Mark Hunter (Michael Douglas) addressing the jury at a murder trial: “The defense would like to tell you that our entire case is circumstantial. There are no eyewitnesses, no ballistic match, no alibi." Odd. One would think that a prosecutor who has scored 17 murder convictions in a row would view the absence of an alibi as something that favors the prosecution and not the defense. Reporter C.J. Nicholas (Jesse Metcalfe) is convinced that Hunter is corrupt; all 17 convictions were decided by DNA evidence that Nicholas is certain was planted in some way by Hunter. For example, a cigarette butt photographed at a crime scene belongs to a cigarette the defendant is shown smoking in an interrogation video; Nicholas's boss asks him rhetorically, "How could someone plant the cigarette at the crime scene when the interrogation took place three days after the crime scene photographs were taken?" Undaunted, Nicholas concocts a harebrained scheme to frame himself for the murder of a prostitute using circumstantial evidence (we know it’s harebrained because is a Life of David Gale ripoff). This includes buying a balaclava (and macing it while he’s wearing it. D’oh!) and a pair of sneakers from an "extremely rare" brand that "they stopped making in 1999." These shoes leave a footprint that matches in “size and weight” one found at the crime scene. I'd say this is a hint that (spoiler) Nicholas is the killer after all (otherwise the "size and weight" thing would be a huge coincidence), but that would be giving Hyams too much credit — especially considering that Nicholas forces a poor Jack Russell to bite him in the calf of his left leg, to recreate the bite received by the murderer courtesy of a witness's dog; however, since he really is the killer, this means he already has a bite mark. The second bite occurs off-camera, which leads me to assume either Nicholas managed to get the second dog to bite him in exactly the same place as the first, or that Corey (Joel David Moore), his friend and accomplice (in everything but the murder), who is also supposedly a journalist, is unable to tell the difference between a fresh dog bite and an old one. And let's not even talk about the sneakers of which Nicholas actually owns two pairs (so much for «extremely rare»). The icing on the bullshit cake is that Nicholas's plan depends entirely on Hunter actually being corrupt and willing to plant evidence, even though it's been well established that this is nothing more than a hunch on Nicholas's part, all his evidence of it nothing but pure speculation.

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John Chard

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