Solid Cast Soldiers On, Fighting a Losing Battle in ‘High Crimes’

Films about women in a whole lot of trouble must be making a whole lot of money because here’s another one. They don’t all star Ashley Judd, but after “Kiss the Girls,” “Double Jeopardy” and now “High Crimes,” it’s starting to seem that way.

It’s not that Judd, who has a knack for spunky vulnerability, hasn’t done good work in these films. Or that Morgan Freeman, her co-star here and in “Kiss the Girls,” isn’t one of the acting wonders of our world. Or that director Carl Franklin, whose films include “One False Move” and “Devil in a Blue Dress,” doesn’t have a gift for involving, character-driven thrillers.

The problem with “High Crimes,” acceptable though it is, is that it’s not close to anyone’s best work. The generic nature of the material seems to have defeated all comers, making it difficult for the participants to fully engage in the task at hand. Given the talent involved, there are of course segments that hold our interest, but the spark, the magic is not there often enough.

“High Crimes” is adapted (by Yuri Zeltser & Carey Bickley) from a successful thriller by Joseph Finder, and perhaps that is one reason for its shortcomings. The film turns out to have an almost limitless supply of false alarms, red herrings, reversals of expectations and plot twists that are not as surprising as they should be. Perhaps these played well on the page, but here they tend to feel overly familiar.

That description especially fits the opening gambit of a young married couple so blissfully, down-to-their-toes happy that you know as well as you know your own name that it is not going to last. Meet Marin County lovebirds Claire and Tom Kubik (Judd and Jim Caviezel).

While Tom does some unspecified work with his hands, Claire is a successful attorney, a zealot for the causes she believes in, which include defending the rights of the accused. “We are all at risk,” she is fond of saying, “until justice is redressed.”

This Bay Area fantasy life is shattered when, in a major display of force, the FBI arrests Kubik and whisks him off to a Marine base in the mythical Southern California city of San Lazaro. Not an attorney for nothing, Claire flies down to spring her man, but she is in for rather a large shock.

It seems Tom Kubik is not really Tom Kubik. He’s Ron Chapman, a former covert Marine Corps operative who’s going to be charged in military court with killing nine people in an incident in El Salvador 15 years earlier.

Tom/Ron (a typical Caviezel role that calls for the actor to look lost and haunted) insists that it’s all a mistake; not only is he innocent, he’s being framed to take the fall for some powerful higher-ups. What’s a girl to do?

After some run-ins with obdurate military types and after meeting the inexperienced attorney assigned to defend her husband (Adam Scott), Claire knows she needs “someone who’s beaten the Marine Corps before and is hungry to beat them again.”

That would be motorcycle-riding, earring-wearing, prostitute-defending, recently sober Charlie Grimes.

Casting Freeman as Grimes is as good a move as “High Crimes” makes. Acting can’t be as easy as watching Freeman makes it appear, but his effortlessly engaging performance as the man who reminds exasperated civilian Claire of the old saw that “military justice is to justice what military music is to music” is this film’s main attraction.

The same can’t be said for the role of Jackie (Amanda Peet), the tiresomely flaky sister who’s pretty much standard issue for high-powered attorneys. Claire and phone psychic Jackie have been estranged for years, and she’s such a continual irritant it’s easy to see why. Intended as comic relief in a film that would be better without it, Jackie ends up loosening the tension in a project that is already not as tight as it needs to be. It’s not more humor that’s needed in “High Crimes,” it’s more focus.

MPAA rating: PG-13, for violence, sexual content and language. Times guidelines: beatings, murders and risque material.

‘High Crimes’

Ashley Judd...Claire Kubik

Morgan Freeman...Charlie Grimes

Jim Caviezel...Tom Kubik

Adam Scott...Embry

Amanda Peet...Jackie

Twentieth Century Fox and Regency Enterprises present a New Regency/Manifest Film Co./Monarch Pictures production, released by Twentieth Century Fox. Director Carl Franklin. Producers Arnon Milchan, Janet Yang, Jesse B’Franklin. Executive producers Lisa Henson, Kevin Reidy. Screenplay Yuri Zeltser & Cary Bickley, based on the novel by Joseph Finder. Cinematographer Theo Van de Sande. Editor Carole Kravetz-Aykanian. Costumes Sharen Davis. Music Graeme Revell. Production design Paul Peters. Art director Gary Kosko. Set decorator Kathryn Peters. Running time: 1 hour, 55 minutes.

In general release.