Movie Review : Strong Cast a Bonus for the Unpredictable ‘Trial by Jury’

“Trial by Jury,” an absorbing and ingenious courtroom drama/lady-in-distress thriller, is all the more entertaining for having successfully made consistently plausible the increasingly improbable. It’s the kind of film that requires star authority to bring it off, and it receives it in abundance from Joanne Whalley-Kilmer, in perhaps her best big-screen role since playing Christine Keeler in “Scandal,” the 1989 retelling of Britain’s Profumo affair.

Whalley-Kilmer is Valerie Alston, a beautiful Manhattan divorcee with a 7-year-old son (Bryan Shilowich) and a SoHo antique clothing boutique. When she’s selected to serve as a juror on the trial of a notorious gangster, Rusty Pirone (Armand Assante), charged with a raft of crimes, including 11 murders, she sees it as simply doing her duty as a good citizen. Yet almost immediately she is plunged into a nightmare, blackmailed by Pirone’s henchman, led by cynical ex-cop Tommy Vesey (William Hurt), who threaten to harm her son if she not only doesn’t find Pirone innocent but also if she fails to persuade enough of her colleagues to go along with her in order to create a hung jury.

Of course, Valerie should turn instantly to U.S. Atty. Daniel Graham (Gabriel Byrne) for protection, but Pirone’s strategies are so diabolically terrifying, her decision not to is wholly and unsettlingly credible.

Written by Jordan Katz and Heywood Gould and directed by Gould, whose first film was “One Good Cop” with Michael Keaton, “Trial by Jury” starts out as a solid, conventional genre piece only to turn unpredictable. Whereas Valerie’s complex and seemingly endless ordeal could bring about a nervous breakdown or worse, it instead toughens her, her loss of innocence confronting her not only with some especially sordid and scary realities of life but also allowing her to discover capabilities within herself she initially would rather have never uncovered.

It is entirely appropriate that Valerie deals in the glamorous gowns of the ‘40s and ‘50s, because when Whalley-Kilmer wears them she recalls the movie heroines of that era. You can easily imagine Barbara Stanwyck tearing into the role of Valerie under the direction of Douglas Sirk. What cinches the film’s success is the exceptional support Whalley-Kilmer receives from her three leading men: Assante as the once icily repellent yet undeniably sexy Pirone (who must surely use John Gotti’s tailor), Byrne as the fiery, determinedly idealistic Graham and Hurt as the coolly ambiguous Vesey, whose fall into Pirone’s clutches is never properly explained but which is effectively papered over by Hurt’s sheer presence. Also contributing strongly in smaller roles, among many others, are Kathleen Quinlan as a lethally tough villain and Stuart Whitman as Whalley-Kilmer’s warm, loving father.

* MPAA rating: R, for violence and language. Times guidelines: It includes depictions of life-endangering situations, including one involving a child.

‘Trial by Jury’

Joanne Whalley-Kilmer: Valerie Alston

Armand Assante: Rusty Pirone

Gabriel Byrne: Daniel Graham

William Hurt: Tommy Vesey

A Warner Bros. presentation of a Morgan Creek production. Director Heywood Gould. Producers James G. Robinson, Chris Meledandri, & Mark Gordon. Executive producer Gary Barber. Screenplay by Jordan Katz and Gould. Cinematographer Frederick Elmes. Editor Joel Goodman. Costume supervisor Arthur Rowsell. Music Terence Blanchard. Production designer David Chapman. Art director Barbra Matis. Set decorator Steve Shewchuk. Running time: 1 hour, 46 minutes.

* In general release throughout Southern California.