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Once a leading figure in the Australian film renaissance of the '70s, Beresford also has a distinguished domestic résumé that includes the outstanding "Tender Mercies" and the multiple Oscar-winning "Driving Miss Daisy." In the '90s, however, the director has seemed to be struggling to find his focus, producing a string of unsuccessful middle-ground films like the death-penalty drama "Last Dance" and the maundering Dixie heart-tugger "Rich in Love." Unhappily, "Double Jeopardy" is more of the same. It's smooth and professional throughout, and Peter James' cinematography even has moments of grace, as when a mid-afternoon walk through a New Orleans cemetery abruptly turns creepy. But a few months from now, hotel-room guests and airline passengers will be drifting off to sleep in front of this movie, and in another year you'll be looking at it on the video-store shelf and wondering, "What the hell was that?"

Nick (Bruce Greenwood) and Libby (Judd) are a mysteriously wealthy yuppie couple living on Washington's spectacular Whidbey Island. Our first indication that wholesome Libby's elevator might not run all the way to the top floor is that she never suspects anything is up with Nick. Greenwood's suave good looks make him perfect to model men's casual wear and play a scheming husband, and he does both here; even the sun-browned crinkles around Nick's eyes ooze manly corruption. Strangers approach Nick at parties and mumble things about money in his ear, but Libby just sails past, wearing her own selections from the Land's End catalog and beaming at their 4-year-old, Matty (Benjamin Weir).

Double Jeopardy Directed by Bruce Beresford Starring Tommy Lee Jones, Ashley Judd, Bruce Greenwood, Annabeth Gish and Roma Maffia

It's one thing for the audience to understand certain crucial facts ahead of the characters; that's a time-honored technique of the thriller genre (for examples, see almost anything by Stephen King). But it's quite another for the audience to see the whole damn story from the get-go, and sit around drumming our fingers waiting for the characters to catch up. When Libby wakes up soaked in blood on the couple's yacht, with Nick apparently having disappeared into the drink, we know perfectly well that he's not really dead. So every minute the screenplay (by David Weisberg and Douglas S. Cook) wastes on Libby's misplaced grief and protestations of innocence -- she actually wails, "I did not kill my husband! You have to believe me!" -- makes us that less patient with her.

"Double Jeopardy" is pretty much marking time until Jones' character, a parole officer named Travis, can get into the picture, which probably accounts for the film's herky-jerky pace. Libby speeds through a six-year prison term (six years? for what was apparently first-degree murder?), during which she figures out that Nick really is alive and has spirited Matty off with Libby's supposed friend, Angela (Annabeth Gish). Libby is also befriended by a tough jailhouse lawyer (Roma Maffia) who tells her about the Constitution's double jeopardy clause, providing that no one can be tried twice for the same crime. Since she's already been convicted of murdering Nick, she can gun him down in plain sight and walk away scot-free. (This isn't really true, but never mind.) Out in the theater, we roll our eyes. At last! The movie is half over, and its plot is finally in motion.

Everyone, including Beresford and Judd, seems to pay more attention once Libby is paroled to a Seattle halfway house run by Travis, another of Jones' tough-sumbitch characters. Libby has played good girl to get out of jail, but now she's determined to hunt down Nick, exact her revenge and reclaim Matty. So we get one terrific sequence in which Libby and Travis plunge off a ferry into Puget Sound shackled to a vintage car, a decent dune buggy chase on the beach and a pleasingly garish manhunt through the rain-soaked French Quarter of New Orleans. A lithe physical presence in her action scenes, Judd looks cute in her snug prison Levi's and smashing in the size-2 Armani gown she steals to wear to a swanky ball where she hopes to entrap Nick, now living a new identity as a Big Easy society bachelor. But as much as I've enjoyed her in such other films as "Kiss the Girls" and "The Locusts," she just doesn't have the gravity or personal magnetism to make Libby's anguish and rage seem real.

Greenwood -- a veteran of dozens of TV shows who played Dr. Seth Griffin on "St. Elsewhere" -- is an even bigger ham as a New Orleans creep than he was as a Northwest creep, and damn near steals the whole movie. (I look forward to seeing him play John F. Kennedy in the forthcoming "Thirteen Days.") When Greenwood, Jones and Dave Hager (as a New Orleans cop) are all in the movie, there's enough growly character-actor charisma on screen to fuel a late-night fishing show. As for Jones, actually a fine actor who is capable of much better than this, I suppose nobody can blame him for taking roles he can (and essentially does) perform in his sleep. Like Beresford, he's making a good living without committing heinous crimes. They're just another two talented guys drifting deeper and deeper into mediocrity.
salon.com | Sept. 24, 1999

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