There's something satisfying about watching a beleaguered woman get revenge on a lowdown-scumsucker of a husband. True, there's also something satisfying about substantive characters and plots without whopping big holes in them. But you can't have everything.
This seems to be the conclusion reached by the makers of
Double Jeopardy: it omits substance but delivers a neatly
vengeful climax (which is never in doubt, by the way, despite
several maladroit attempts to create "suspense" or
"complications" in the plot that is only going where it must go).
The tradeoff appears to be structured as a rudimentary moral
opposition. You have a clearly defined victim and villain, in
this case a young and pretty (and unnervingly naive) wife/mother
and a consummately despicable husband/father. Indeed, the deck is
so stacked for you to identify with Libby that it's hard not to
feel a brief twinge of pleasure when she rises up, bloodied and
exhausted, to smite her oppressor.
Even more distressing is the fact that the film is populated
with skillful actors who have done excellent work elsewhere, and
directed by Bruce Beresford, who has done solid work in the past
(Breaker Morant and Tender Mercies stand out as subtle
explorations of familial and political milieus, even if Driving
Miss Daisy is notoriously offensive on precisely these counts).
This film actually looks very good — the scenes are generally
well-cut, the slow motion effects used to convey the
protagonist's distress aren't too fatuous, and the melodrama is
tolerable. The question you're left with, the one that picks at
you throughout the film, however, is this: how did such a
talented and experienced company imagine they could salvage such
a silly script?
Written by David Weisberg and Douglas S. Cook, the film
resembles their first big hit, The Rock, in its predilection
for rollercoasterish thrills and illogics. The film begins with
basic, thumbnail introductions. Libby (Ashley Judd, who hasn't
had a role worth her talent since her first one, in Victor
Nunez's lovely Ruby in Paradise) is introduced sitting outside
her huge seaside home in Seattle, spending quality time with her
adorable young son, Matty. She loves her son and her husband Nick
(Bruce Greenwood, incredibly good in two recent Atom Egoyan
movies, Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter, and slightly less
wonderful in Disturbing Behavior and the TV series Nowhere
Man). Her life seems so perfect, what can she possibly want?
Conveniently, she wants a sailboat, which provides her Nick
with exactly the bait he needs to set her up for his murder. The
movie doesn't waste any time establishing his deceitfulness: when
he tells Libby that he's willing to go sailing with her, the
camera lingers on his distanced expression and his exchanges of
meaningful looks with Libby's supposed "best friend," Angie
(Annabeth Gish, who also has not had a decent part since her
sensational debut in Desert Bloom). The fateful day comes:
Libby and Nick sail, make love, drink wine. She wakes in the
middle of the night with blood all over her. She runs to the deck
to scream for her missing husband, and lo! finds a knife which
she promptly picks up just in time for the Coast Guard to shine a
spotlight on her.
Libby goes to prison for murder (with no body in sight) and
convinces Angie to adopt Matty, for his sake of course. Where
Libby's lawyer is during any of this is unclear. In prison, she
phones Angie, hears Nick in the background, and is suddenly
horrified that she has been so laughably gullible. Luckily, she
meets Margaret (Roma Maffia, who also needs a better agent, after
performing so consistently well in TV's erratic series,
Profiler), a former lawyer who tells her about this fifth
amendment outlawing double jeopardy (being convicted twice for
the same crime). She can kill Nick.
Now that she has a goal, Libby turns into Linda Hamilton:
she goes running in the rain, pumps iron, and does sit-ups in her
cell, apparently for six years. Once released, she's assigned to
a parole officer, Travis Lehman (Tommy Lee Jones, who should be
sick of this bounty hunter role by now, having played versions of
it in The Fugitive, U.S. Marshals, and even Men in Black),
who takes a particular interest in her case when she dumps his
beater car off a ferry, slams him in the head with his own gun,
and escapes his custody while a crowd of ferry-riders watches the
show. Not to be outdone by a woman, Travis makes it his personal
mission to track down Libby, as she, in turn, tracks down Nick.
It would appear that Double Jeopardy fancies itself a
feminist film, because it features a potent woman who kicks ass
and is a good mother to boot: ostensibly, the reason she does any
of what she does — almost drowning, getting nailed into a
coffin, jumping through windows, running down long stretches of
beachfront — is because she loves her son so very much and wants
to retrieve him from his dreadfully self-centered dad.
It's possible that a more credible plot and critique might
be made concerning the judicial system that incarcerates people
with no evidence, the incarceration system that puts all kinds of
inmates in cells and cafeterias and showers together (thus
creating criminals rather than rehabilitating them), or even the
insurance system that allows preposterous policies to be signed
and paid, despite manifestly corrupt intentions. But no. Basing
the plot in an array of unlikely relationships, individual
displays of fortitude, and preposterous opportunities for
betrayal makes the whole shebang seem trivial and tacky. So much
for women's issues and rights.
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