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80Stylish and effective, if slightly overlong, thriller.
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75This is the second movie Judd and Freeman have made together (after "Kiss the Girls" in 1997). They're both good at projecting a kind of Southern intelligence that knows its way around the frailties of human nature.
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75Comes across as gratifying, not grating: the same way the familiarity of a well-crafted whodunit is part of the book's pleasures.
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75Has some faults, but it manages to keep its audience either angry or jumpy from start to finish.
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70Satisfies a hunger for the basics: a decent mystery to chew on, a bit of juicy suspense, maybe a plot twist as garnish. The fare is all on the standard menu, but it goes down well just the same.
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67Franklin injects life into a flat format and has in the process done something nearly unheard of in Hollywood as of late: He's brought class back to the genre film.
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67Even if it lacks the finesse of Franklin's earlier work, High Crimes moves like a bullet.
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63It's still a disappointment: a well-mounted and well-acted suspense movie that, thanks to its illogical script, falls off a cliff midway through.
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60Franklin directs smoothly, but except for Freeman, the theatrics are pretty pro forma.
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60The problem with High Crimes, acceptable though it is, is that it's not close to anyone's best work.
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60Ms. Judd commands the screen with consistent authority, and Mr. Freeman brings expansive humor to the role of a self-styled wildcard who's still dangerous in court.
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50The story has possibilities, but you'll spot the big plot twists long before they happen, and the acting by Judd and Cavaziel is strictly by the numbers.
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50The biggest offense in the somewhat unimaginative but serviceable legal thriller High Crimes is that the venerable Morgan Freeman simply does not get enough screen time, and when he's up there, he doesn't have enough to do.
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50Judd has genuine movie star magnetism -- beauty, intelligence, presence and talent to spare. In the old studio days, she'd be Ingrid Bergman by now.
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50It's terribly predictable and often risible stuff.
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50It's no crime the movie has one or two endings too many, given that many thrillers of the past quarter-century have had the same. But Judd's latest is too harmless to be anything but a misdemeanor.
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50Every minute of the film is trash, and director Carl Franklin seems to know it.
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50The chief pleasure of High Crimes (and it's a limited one) comes from watching Morgan Freeman, who can bring a sense of integrity to even the silliest thriller.
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50This thing's got more plot than an Alliance convention. Unfortunately (to extend the comparison), not a whole lot of it makes a lick of common sense.
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50It's hard to see Franklin's fingerprints on the material. It's as if he directed with his gloves on.
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50Undermined by contrived suspense sequences, a pointless subplot involving Claire's flaky, trashy sister, and a formulaic thriller ending.
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50This is very much a ''woman's picture,'' driven by a twin rudder of anxiety and empowerment.
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50While its blowout finale is telegraphed long before the first act ends, and too much else is just as obvious and bland, Judd, Freeman and Franklin never stop adding filigree. The big picture isn't much to look at, but the detailing isn't bad.
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50For his part. Mr. Freeman shows himself, once again, incapable of giving a bad performance.
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40Washes away whatever unique filmmaking personality Franklin has.
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40High Crimes does offer good, often sharp and funny work from its two stars. But you can't fake excitement, and it's a lousy feeling to know that the best commercial movie I can point you to right now is this shallow, self-erasing nonsense.
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40The strands in High Crimes don't coalesce. Those red herrings somehow take over the picture; the thing itself turns into a giant red herring.
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40Judd now is top-billed, but her performance is so resolutely humorless and businesslike that Freeman's gruffly affectionate warmth becomes doubly valuable, though not nearly enough to lend this generic project any special character.
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40Film falls into the same trap as the book: a moderately interesting setup ultimately undone by an ending that makes the audience feel like fools for investing any sympathy with the characters.
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38Once, for no reason, Franklin whirled the camera around 360 degrees while two people were having an ordinary conversation. I suspect he must have been as bored by then as I was.
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30A major disappointment that lacks the courage to follow through on its premise's themes.
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30Secret trials and buried atrocities are no match for a plucky (and rich, and svelte) young heroine, least of all Ms. Ashley Judd, who eyebrow-cocks her way through Carl Franklin's witless High Crimes.
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20All in all, High Crimes isn't worth the crayons it took to write the script.
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