Last night I watched one of my favorites, Runaway Jury. Now the film is a butchery of the original work which was a tobacco lawsuit and where the lines between good and evil weren’t so clearly set. (I will note I haven’t read the book, as I read The Firm, and I found it to be an interesting and exciting 200 page novel…that spanned 600 pages. There are far too many books and good authors in the world to bother with second chances) Still the plot element of manipulating a jury for the sake of swaying a trial still makes the movie fantastic.
Furthermore like Lethal Weapon 3 the movie heavily dips into the popular anti-gun themes and talking-points, but do it so ham-handedly that it boarders on comedy. Of course the book was a tobacco company, which holds up better anyway since at least you can say people sickened by tobacco smoke were at least using the product at the manufactures intended. (I would also point out that there is nobody on the planet who lights up a smoke who thinks they’re doing their body a favor, nor was there ever. Even Walt Disney who smoked in a day when there were ashtrays in Hospital waiting rooms tried to keep his immense smoking habit a secret from children…why would he do that if he thought smoking was a harmless adult behavior?).
They say for a Science Fiction story to be believable the author should only be allowed to break one law of physics for the sake of narrative. Generally in Science Fiction today its the Theory of Relativity where the speed of light is the maximum speed limit of the universe. This movie has to make several concessions to reality to keep their narrative afloat.
-#1: Totally made-up scary menacing gun. Further its, and the other guns made by the fictitious firearms company is refereed to as an “Assault Weapon”, and everybody openly accepts this made-up term to be valid.
-#2: The Gun Control Act, and the ATF simply don’t exist. All sorts of federal laws were broken in this case, yet somehow there is no discussion of criminal convictions, this is simply a civil case.
-#3. The prosecution only presents emotional arguments, and even presents a home movie of the victim before his death with no objections. Not only does the gun company CEO get flustered and looses his cool on the stand, but when prosecution closes and when the jury deliberates they all reference “the facts of the case”, but with 90% of the movie set in the courtroom during the trial, not a single fact was actually presented. The whole case is a Straw Man beaten down by Assertion Fallacies
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-#4. The standard anti-gun “logic” of “Guns are different, because they are different” is presented. The best counter-argument against criminals using guns in the commission of crimes, and criminals selling guns illegally is the use of dangerous LEGAL products like cigarettes and fatty food. Never once is the age old question of if car makers or alcohol makers responsible for drunk driving?
-#5. Not only is this case presented as solid, but its implied that there were several other anti-gun cases that were just as solid, but were swayed by jury manipulation.
This is the sad reality of the anti-gun people, even when given the realm of fiction they can’t even present a believable case against banning guns or punishing gun makers.
To add insult to injury, I looked up the trailers for both Runaway Jury, and Lethal Weapon 3, and their main plot elements are never even mentioned in the ads. Those were different times, but it appears they weren’t so different for the ad companies to know that attacking the 2nd Amendment with fallacies isn’t good box office.
Oh and for those who haven’t seen it, anybody remember this spoof?
Overall I love this movie because its a great thriller, the anti-gun message WOULD be an offensive turn-off to me if it wasn’t so pathetic. A movie I can’t watch because of the anti-gun message is Crash, because it actually does a GOOD job at demonizing guns. In this film EVERY scene with a gun is presented in a negative manner, from abusive racist cops bullying people, to criminals robbing and killing, even a wrongful shooting out of fear and ignorance. The one self-defense case is portrayed as a murder to the extend of the character covering it up as if it were a crime scene.
