katrunk I was looking forward to watching this movie remake because I enjoyed the original so much. Unfortunately it was a disappointment. The dialogue was awful and amateurish. Please do yourself a favor and watch the original starring Dana Andrews! You can sometimes find it on TCM ( Turner classic movies ) or the retro channel. The original as much slicker and more suspenseful!

seymourblack-1 In remaking Fritz Lang's 1956 film noir of the same name, Peter Hyams has added more gloss, colour and car chases as well as making various plot changes. No doubt, the purpose of this was to make the whole production more visually appealing to 21st century audiences and to use the action sequences to add extra excitement. Unfortunately, what's actually been produced is a thriller that's visually bland and compares unfavourably against the original because the plot changes and action sequences actively detract from the intrigue, impact and shocks that Fritz Lang's movie was able to deliver with such skill and ease despite having a very low budget to work with and a considerably shorter running time.In Shreveport, Louisiana, ambitious TV investigative reporter, C J Nicholas (Jesse Metcalfe) becomes interested in the extraordinary success that local D.A. Mark Hunter (Michael Douglas) has achieved by securing 17 consecutive guilty verdicts in murder cases that he's recently prosecuted. Nicholas also notes that, in each of these cases, DNA evidence played a significant role in achieving the conviction. This makes him suspicious that Hunter, who's been tipped to become the next Governor, is corruptly using planted evidence to win his cases.In order to pursue his investigation, Nicholas befriends Ella Crystal (Amber Tamblyn), an Assistant D.A. who works with Hunter and as well as dating her, persuades her to supply him with a video of the police interrogation of one of the convicted murderers. Using this video to support his theory about Hunter's methods, Nicholas, with his colleague Corey Finley (Joel David Moore), tries to persuade his boss to let them launch a full investigation. After his boss refuses, Nicholas decides to go ahead anyway and comes up with a plan to get himself arrested for murder by using various items of circumstantial evidence to implicate himself. With his colleague's help, he does just that and Finley videotapes all their relevant actions and retains all associated documents so that, when the appropriate time comes, they can simply produce their evidence to prove Hunter's dishonesty.Nicholas succeeds in getting himself arrested and during his subsequent trial, at the point where he feels that he can prove that Hunter planted DNA evidence, Finley rushes off to collect their evidence to bring back to the court. Their plan fails, however, after Finley is involved in a fatal car crash and all the evidence that he's carrying gets burned. Nicholas is duly found guilty of the crime he's been tried for and finds himself on death row. Ella then embarks on her own investigation in the hope of completing it successfully in time to save Nicholas from being executed.Disappointingly, all the plot changes in this movie only serve to make the story worse than the original. For example, in the Lang movie, the main motivation of the two men who devised the bizarre plan was to discredit the use of the death penalty. In Hyams' version, Nicholas' only motivation is to expose the wickedness of an ambitious man who achieves his aims by planting false evidence and just to prove his own moral superiority, Nicholas tries to do this by also planting false evidence!! Even worse is the decision to make Nicholas the instigator of the scheme as this seriously detracts from the impact and shock of the movie's final twist.The desire to spice up the action with unnecessary extended car chases also has a detrimental effect in the scene in which Finley gets killed. The very protracted build-up takes away all the shock-value that worked so well in the original and another episode in which Ella is pursued around a car park by another car is utterly pointless and ends awkwardly with what could be described as a dramatic non sequitur.Jesse Metcalfe is rather lightweight for his role but does his best as someone who, throughout the entire movie, seems dim before proving unequivocally at the end that he is a complete idiot,. Similarly, Amber Tamblyn's talent is wasted as Nicholas' lover whose conduct in providing him with the police interrogation video is ill-judged, unethical and disloyal to her employers and her mentor. Michael Douglas by contrast, brings great authority to his role as the corrupt and arrogant prosecutor and in so doing, injects some much needed quality into this otherwise thoroughly disappointing movie.

blanche-2 The classic "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt" from 1956 is a favorite noir of mine, starring Dana Andrews, Joan Fontaine, and Sidney Blackmer, directed by the great Fritz Lang. We describe it as a classic today, but back then, with stars and a director who made their marks in the preceding decades, and filmed in black and white, I don't think it was intended to be a classic. There were none of the Fritz Lang touches, no artful camera work -- in fact, this was Lang's last film.However, it happens to be a fantastic story, one of the best ever, and here it has been updated and changed somewhat for the 2009 film. In fact, it was changed a little too much, and that too much is what spoils it.The original film was an indictment against the death penalty. A novelist sets himself up as a killer so that the fact that he faked all of the evidence can be submitted before his execution, thus proving the system almost murdered the wrong man.In this film, the plot concerns a reporter (Jesse Metcalfe) desiring to prove that a district attorney (Michael Douglas) is falsifying DNA evidence to win convictions.I suppose given the fact that people are on Death Row for sometimes 30 years kind of spoils it as a film plot, but I don't think the plot here served what could have been an exciting update of a great story.Both films have a plot flaw -- the handling of the evidence to clear the reporter -- which could have been easily fixed. Not only is it not fixed in this one, but this movie dug a couple of other holes besides.First, how does a reporter in this day and age not know that jailhouse phone calls are recorded? Has he never seen one episode of Snapped, 20/20, or any true crime show? Worse, how did an attorney not know it?Second, what was that business in the parking garage? Any time you see a woman, at night, going into an empty parking garage, you know her chances of exiting, alive and driving her own car, are not good. Why would a woman who is aware that danger lurks even go into that garage without getting some guy to walk her out? And the attempted murder - please, ever heard of a gun? Third, the handling of the evidence that was to clear Metcalfe. A problem in both films, though in this latter film, the case isn't solved that way, so it just sticks out as being dumb.Still, it's not a bad rental. Amber Tamblyn does an okay job as Metcalfe's love interest, and Michael Douglas is good as the phony, icy DA.

cartman_1337 Peter Hyams may not be the most respected director in the game, but I've enjoyed several of his movies in the past none the less. I've also always liked Michael Douglas as an actor, and I've always had a soft spot for courtroom dramas. This is actually not the first time these three ingredients have been mixed up in a movie. In 1983 Michael Douglas starred in Peter Hyams' The Star Chamber, where he plays a judge tired of seeing guilty people run around free due to technicalities rendering damning evidence inadmissible after the law. In retrospect I should have just stuck with that, and given this one a pass. But finding it in the bargain bin it was hard not checking it out.A reporter who've followed the cases of the district attorney (Michael Douglas) for some time suspects the D.A.'s perfect track record to be a lie, and that the D.A. in several of the cases have manufactured the damning evidence, in the form of DNA evidence pointing to the man on trial, planted several days after the crime. His editor doesn't believe him, so with the help of a friend he sets out on a potentially dangerous mission; the next time a murder is discovered, he'll plant circumstantial evidence (sans DNA) pointing to himself, having the friend video tape it in order to destroy the D.A.'s case at the point he knows for sure that he has planted DNA evidence against him. In the mix is also a female lawyer from the D.A.'s office, who becomes romantically involved with the reporter.The premise sounds promising enough. And sure enough, it's a remake of a 1956 movie by the same name, helmed by Fritz Lang, who if you ask me is responsible for the greatest movie ever made; Metropolis, as well as a steady stream of other masterpieces. The best thing I can say about this version of the movie is that it made me aware of the original, and made me want to see it. When I bought it I was unaware of the original's existence.As many others have pointed out before, this version of the movie is full of plot holes, some harder to ignore than others. The flow of the movie is extremely streamlined and predictable, and with the exception of Michael Douglas, who has a much smaller part than I had hoped, no one really delivers any good acting performances either. Douglas isn't really very remarkable in this movie either, but I'd bet that even at his worst it would be obvious he's in a different league than the rest of the cast, and here he isn't even at his worst... The movie looks dark on dull, and has limited production values. I can certainly understand the poor reputation and user score that made me skeptical to the movie to begin with. In fact, I'm surprised it isn't rated even lower.Not having seen the original yet I think it's still safe to say; stick with the original. I'll certainly be checking it out. After all, the premise does have promise, if it's executed correctly and have reasonable explanations for its plot holes. This movie doesn't even try to explain any of them...