Double Jeopardy (film)

Double Jeopardy
Film poster
Directed by	Bruce Beresford
Produced by	Leonard Goldberg
Written by	David Weisberg Douglas Cook
Starring	Tommy Lee Jones Ashley Judd Bruce Greenwood Jay Brazeau Roger R. Cross Annabeth Gish Bruce Campbell
Music by	Normand Corbeil
Cinematography	Peter James
Editing by	Mark Warner
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date(s)	September 24, 1999
Running time	105 min.
Country	United States / Canada
Language	English
Budget	$70 million
Box office	$177 million

Double Jeopardy is a 1999 thriller film directed by Bruce Beresford and starring Tommy Lee Jones and Ashley Judd. The film is about a woman who is framed for the murder of her husband.

Plot

Wealthy residents of Whidbey Island Nick Parsons (Bruce Greenwood) and his wife Elizabeth (Ashley Judd), known as Libby, borrow a friend's yacht and set off sailing for the weekend. After dinner, and a rousing love making session, Libby falls asleep. She wakes to find her husband missing and blood all over her hands, clothes, legs, and the boat's floors. A Coast Guard vessel appears and Libby is spotted holding a bloody knife she found lying on the deck. She is arrested, humiliated in the media, tried, and convicted for the murder of her husband.

Libby asks her best friend, Angela Green (Annabeth Gish), to look after her 4-year-old son, Matty (Benjamin Weir), for the duration of her prison sentence. On a phone call with Matty from prison, Libby hears a door open in the background, then Matty exclaims "Daddy!" right before the line goes dead.

Libby realizes that Nick possibly faked his death and framed her, leaving their son as the sole beneficiary of his life insurance policy, as people convicted for murder are not allowed to collect insurance of their victims. She attempts (unsuccessfully) to get investigative help. She is then told by a fellow inmate that if she were to get parole for good behavior, she could kill Nick without consequences due to the double jeopardy clause in the Fifth Amendment.

Libby is paroled after six years and begins searching for Nick and Matty while living in a halfway house under the supervision of parole officer Travis Lehman (Tommy Lee Jones). Libby violates her curfew and is caught breaking into the school on Whidbey Island to try to get Angela's records, but manages to escape from Travis and continue her search.

After finding out Angela has recently died in Colorado, she recognizes a piece of art in a newspaper photo. Tracing it through a dealer's database leads her to New Orleans where she finds Nick living under another assumed name, Jonathan Devereaux.

Libby confronts him after making a winning bid of $10,000 on him at a bachelor's auction. She demands he return Matty in exchange for her silence about his real identity. Nick agrees to bring Matty to a meeting in a cemetery. But he uses a decoy boy to distract Libby, knocks her unconscious, and locks her in a casket inside a mausoleum.

Using a .38 caliber handgun she had snatched from Travis, Libby manages to shoot the hinges to the lid of the casket and escape by throwing a flower vase through a stained glass window.

While tracking Libby in New Orleans, Travis himself has now become suspicious of Nick's death and begins to believe Libby due to the clues uncovered in his search. He finds a picture for a different Nicholas Parsons when searching the Washington State DMV records to prove his suspicions. After seemingly capturing Libby later in the city, the two actually team up, since Travis suspected there might be more than one person with that name in the DMV records, and confirmed it with the picture from the third applicant. Travis visits Nick in his office under the pretense of asking for money to keep his identity secret. He records a remark by Nick that he had murdered his wife, the only witness to his true past. Libby enters, holding Nick at gunpoint. Nick is given a choice of surrendering to the authorities or getting shot by his vengeful ex-wife, who he believes would go free for this deed because of double jeopardy.

Nick responds with violence. In the ensuing melee, Nick pulls out a hidden gun, shoots Travis and fires away at Libby. Travis manages to bring Nick down before he can shoot Libby. Nick gets the upper hand, but before he can kill the wounded parole officer, Libby shoots him dead.

Travis promises to help Libby get fully pardoned and travel to Matty's boarding school in Georgia, where he is playing soccer. Matty (Spencer Treat Clark), now eleven years old, recognizes his mother and they embrace.

Cast

• Tommy Lee Jones - Travis Lehman
• Ashley Judd - Elizabeth "Libby" Parsons
• Bruce Greenwood - Nicholas "Nick" Parsons / Simon Ryder / Jonathan Devereaux
• Jay Brazeau - Bobby Long
• Roger R. Cross - Hotel Manager
• Annabeth Gish - Angela "Angie" Green
• Bruce Campbell - Bartender at Party
• Benjamin Weir - Matty Parsons (age 4)
• Spencer Treat Clark - Matty Parsons (age 11)
• John MacLaren - Rudy
• Ed Evanko - Warren

Legal accuracy

Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz criticized the movie for misrepresenting the legal doctrine of double jeopardy, a constitutional right in the United States granted by the Fifth Amendment.^[1] "There are two separate incidents," Dershowitz said. "She was falsely accused the first time. And maybe she can sue for that or get some credit. But then she committed an entirely separate or at least planned to commit an entirely separate crime the second time. And there's just no defense of double jeopardy for doing it the second time."

VHS and DVD release

Double Jeopardy was released on VHS and DVD by Paramount Home Video on February 22, 2000. The DVD included a behind-the-scenes featurette and its original theatrical trailer. It is presented in its original 2.35:1 widescreen format.

Reception

The film received mixed to generally negative reviews. It is rated 26% on Rotten Tomatoes as its "consensus" states "A talented cast fails to save this unremarkable thriller."^[2] Roger Ebert gives the film two and a half stars out of four, indicating a lukewarm reception.^[3]

However, some critics reacted to this film with positive reviews, with Leonard Maltin giving the film 3 out of 4 stars and calling it "slick entertainment". Mick LaSalle from the San Francisco Chronicle wrote that the film is a "well-acted diversion, directed by Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy) with an intelligent grasp of the moment-to-moment emotion".^[4] For her performance in Double Jeopardy, Ashley Judd won the 2000 Favorite Actress of Blockbuster Entertainment Award.^[5]

Box office

The film was a box office success, grossing $116 million domestically and $61 million overseas, totaling to a $177 million.^[6]

References

1. ^ "Alan Dershowitz Discusses Double Jeopardy Clause in Fifth Amendment". October 5, 1999. http://www.scribd.com/doc/52357894/Alan-Dershowitz. 
2. ^ Double Jeopardy. Rotten Tomatoes.
3. ^ Ebert, Roger. Double Jeopardy. Sep. 24. 1999.
4. ^ LaSalle, Mick. Criminally Good. San Francisco Chronicle. September 24, 1999
5. ^ Awards for Double Jeopardy. IMDB.
6. ^ Double Jeopardy. Box Office Mojo.

External links

• Double Jeopardy at the Internet Movie Database
• Straight Dope article on Double Jeopardy, including discussion of this film