TRIAL BY JURY (Directed by Haywood Gould. Starring, Joanne Whalley-Kilmer, Gabriel Byrne, Armand Assante and William Hurt)

I have to produce a reluctant guilty verdict on this confused courtroom thriller. Its one of those movies that makes your heart sink by the time the first seen-it-all-before-on-TV sequence passes by, with the lame screenplay matched by pedestrian camerawork and careless editing. The real pity with Trial By Jury is that it wastes the talents of four interesting actors, who probably aren’t quite popular enough to get better material. Since emigrating to America, Joanne Whalley-Kilmer has struggled with a series of shaky accents and ridiculous wigs, and fails to hold the central interest in the sketchily defined character of a juror being blackmailed by a mafia defendant. Armand Assante is suitably menacing as her tormentor, but is saddled with a frankly laughable obsession with old movies for apparently no purpose other than to set up the contrived climax. Gabriel Byrne’s accent wanders from one side of the Atlantic to the other in the standard pushy DA role, and his roguish smile is frankly wearing a bit thin. Only William Hurt, who seems to have given up leading actor status to play idiosyncratic minor parts for fun, rises above the material, as Assante’s corrupt ex-cop fixer. Hurt gives us an intriguingly gentle, world weary villain, sick to the soul with his own vice. His character is so interesting, you wonder why the film-makers did not develop him further, rather than running the gamut of court room cliches, and ripping off better movies. As judge, jury and executioner, I’d have this one thrown out for time wasting.