A Time to Kill
Short description
A Time to Kill is set in a small town in Mississippi, where two white men rape a ten-year-old Black girl. Her father, Carl Lee Hailey, a Vietnam veteran, fears the men will escape serious punishment, so he shoots them before their trial can begin. Charged with murder, he faces the possibility of the death penalty. A young white lawyer, Jake Brigance, agrees to defend him, aided by Ellen Roark, a law student. Their case stirs up racial tension in the town, and the Ku Klux Klan becomes active again, targeting those connected to the defense.
The film is based on John Grisham's novel. Joel Schumacher directed it, the ninth of the twenty-one features he directed, coming between Batman Forever and Batman & Robin. Akiva Goldsman wrote the screenplay, and Arnon Milchan, Michael G. Nathanson and Hunt Lowry produced. Matthew McConaughey plays Jake Brigance, with Sandra Bullock as Ellen Roark, Samuel L. Jackson as Carl Lee Hailey, Kevin Spacey as prosecutor Rufus Buckley, Ashley Judd as Carla Brigance and Donald Sutherland as Lucien Wilbanks. The credited cast runs to eighty-one people.
Made for a budget of forty million dollars, the film took about one hundred fifty-two million dollars worldwide, a strong commercial result. On IMDb it holds a rating of 7.5 from roughly two hundred five thousand votes, and on TMDB 7.4 from about three thousand votes, indicating a generally favourable audience response. The critics' rating stands at 6.1 from fifty-six reviews, lower than the audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- Matthew McConaughey was initially cast as Freddy Lee Cobb, a Ku Klux Klan member and brother to one of the men killed by Carl Lee Hailey (a role ultimately played by Kiefer Sutherland).
- The film is based on John Grisham's novel "A Time to Kill" (1989).
- The film was met with extremely negative reviews from the French press due to its controversial ideas, which various publications described as "almost fascist, an ultra-right apology for the death penalty" and "exploitation of the themes of racism and violence against children to cover up justification for vigilantism".
- Val Kilmer, John Cusack, Robert Downey Jr., Aidan Quinn, Brad Pitt, Woody Harrelson, and Kevin Costner were all considered for the role of Jake Brigance. The latter was very close to being cast, but John Grisham (co-producer and author of the book) opposed it, fearing that Costner would “overpower” the entire film crew and influence the plot of the film.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
