RUNAWAY JURY
RATING: PG-13
STARRING: Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, John Cusack, Rachel Wiesz, Bruce Davison, Bruce McGill, and Jeremy Piven
DIRECTOR: Gary Fleder
PRODUCERS: Arnon Milchan, Gary Fleder, and Christopher Mankiewicz
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Jeffrey Downer
WRITERS: Brian Koppelman, David Levien, Rick Cleveland, and Matthew Chapman
DISTRIBUTOR: 20th Century Fox
GENRE: Drama/Mystery/Courtroom Drama
INTENDED AUDIENCE: Older Children to adults
SUMMARY: Runaway Jury is a left-wing propaganda movie that is absolutely shameless in the way it makes all the characters opposed to its radical message look as bad as possible. Ironically, the game that this movie about jury tampering plays is as phony and rigged as the jury in the story.
John Cusack stars in the movie as a young man who infiltrates a jury in New Orleans during a trial against a gun manufacturer. Dustin Hoffman plays the lawyer suing the manufacturer for being culpable when a disturbed man uses one of the manufacturer’s guns to slaughter a bunch of people in an office. Gene Hackman plays the evil jury consultant working for the gun manufacturer. Rachel Wiesz plays Cusack’s cohort, who offers the jury to both sides, for $15 million.
CONTENT: Strong Romantic worldview using emotional arguments to make a very strong politically correct, deceitful case for gun control, with an anti-American slant that targets the American military and cynically uses patriotism to manipulate jury, lawyers, and judge in civil case, plus a few positive references to Christianity such as prayer, religious candles, and a God bless you, as well as at least a couple anti-Christian elements such as pastor’s wife has a secret sin and villain lightly mocks man’s faith; at least 24 obscenities, two strong profanities, and one light profanity; moderate violence such as gunshots heard as gunman slaughters office workers.
THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE
RATING: R
STARRING: Jessica Biel, Jonathan Tucker, Erica Leerhsen, Mike Vogel, Eric Balfour, Andrew Brynarski, and R. Lee Ermey
DIRECTOR: Marcus Nispel
PRODUCERS: Michael Bay, Matthew Cohan, and Andrew Form
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Mike Fleiss, Bradley Fuller, and Guy Stodel
WRITERS: Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel
DISTRIBUTOR: New Line Cinema
GENRE: Horror
INTENDED AUDIENCE: Teenagers and adults
SUMMARY: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre tells the story of five young people returning from Mexico with a load of marijuana, almost striking a distraught young female walking on the side of the road. They stop to check her condition and, to their later misfortune, decide to give her a ride to the nearest sheriff’s office, thus triggering the sequence of events leading to the horror that is to come. The corrupt Sheriff Hoyt wants to use the youth as bait to lure the chainsaw-wielding Leatherface from his hiding place. Before anybody can say "timber," the old chainsaw is back in action, working double-time in the expert, murderous hands of the terrifying Leatherface.
The new generation of horror fans may enjoy the moody, depressing and washed out photography, the creepy cutaways of discolored dentures in jars filled with yellow fluids, the performances, and the bloody clumps of hair here and there. However, the graphic gore, obscenities, profanities, juvenile lust, drug use, lying, and brutal killing make Texas Chainsaw Massacre highly hazardous even to diehard horror movie fans.
CONTENT: Pagan worldview, with some redeeming elements shown in the actions of the heroine who most of the time chooses right over wrong; about 71 mostly strong obscenities, 17 strong profanities, 10 light profanities, vomiting, and obscene gesture; heavy, excessive, bloody, and scary violence and gore including deaths caused with the use of a chainsaw, automobile, knife, and gun.
