Yes, they deserved to die and I hope they burn in hell!

Oddly, this isn't a post about last spring. Nope, I was flipping channels yesterday and came across the movie adaptation of John Grisham's A Time to Kill. I think I saw this in the theater a decade or so ago, and perhaps even caught it during its first go rounds on the movie channels. But except for Sam L. Jackson's oft-repeated line (the title of the post, in case you weren't aware), I had forgotten just about everything about it. So I got sucked in and watched it and was simply amazed at the level of talent involved with this thing. Of course, I use "talent" loosely, since it was directed by Joel Schmumacher, who made this in between installments of grudge fucking the Batman franchise into oblivion, before it was rescued by Chris Nolan and Christian Bale. But Schumacher actually did a respectable job here, even with the heavy handed race relations material.

As I mentioned, it seems even the smallest roles had recognizable faces. In a single movie version of Whodat, here are some of the cast members:

• Our protagonist, Jake Brigance, was Wooderson.
• His northeast liberal assistant (without the heavy Boston accent) was Annie the Wildcat.
• The defendant was Jules Winfield.
• The prosecuting DA was Verbal Kint.
• Jake's attorney friend was Hector the alligator hunter.
• The Sheriff was the preacher/convict (same difference, right?) on Fiorina 161.
• Jake's secretary was Veronica Guerin's mom.
• Jake's drunken mentor was Klute.
• The racist brother of one of the victims was Klute's son, Jack Bauer.
• The Judge was Longshanks.
• Jake's wife, constantly glistening in the summer heat, was one of the hottest women alive.
• Deputy Looney was homophobic Col. Frank Fitts.
• The head of the KKK was Clarence Boddiker.
• The local preacher was a noted character actor in a lot of things, including one of the worst movies of all time.
• The prosecution's psychiatric expert should know something about the subject matter, since he was also Dr. Fredrick Chilton.
• The defense's psychiatric expert is another recognizable character actor, who was (among other things) in the aforementioned horrible movie, Arthur Dales in one of the great episodes of the X-Files, and tried to kill Navin R. Johnson ("He hates these cans!").