A Time to Kill

“A Time to Kill” was not about the trial of a man who committed a murder, but was an exploration into the blinkered society we may live in. Of course the African American Carl Lee (Samuel L Jackson) killed the two rapists of his ten year old daughter, and naturally he was guilty of that, and you would think that as we are watching a courtroom film about whether he was guilty or not, that he would have no chance of being acquitted….but that’s just it, it’s not a film about whether he is guilty, and so people should stop judging it on basis that it ignores the facts. The best way to make a courtroom drama dramatic is to heap as much evidence up against the defendant that the viewer is rooting for, and that’s all they done here (to the maximum).

The vigilante murder by the grieving father was just a catalyst and the courtroom was just the setting. They were just tools used to drive the message of the film, which is pretty much summed up in lawyer Jake Brigance’s (Matthew McConaughey) final speech when he says, “now imagine the girl is white”. The film, like some reviewers seem to be saying, is not implying that the white jury are inherently racist against black people and that they’d be more horrified by a white girl being raped than a black girl. What it’s saying is that the jury would maybe sympathise or relate (and I use these terms loosely) to it happening to a white girl as they would be able to picture it more as if it were their own daughter who had been violated, rather than a poor black girl of a crazy (enter racial slur here___).

To support this, Carl’s little pre-judgement day talk to Brigance lies at the heart of this final speech when Carl tells Brigance in his prison cell that through no fault of anybodies, they have been divided as white and black, that they are from different neighbourhoods and that their kids won’t ever play together. In a sense this would have been true, especially if you take into account the time the film was supposed to be it set. The whole point was explicitly verbalised to the viewer when Carl asks Brigance to make the jury see through his eyes, or in a more literal sense befitting the film, through his heart and that’s what he did.

Don’t rip this film apart for being illogical to facts or irresponsible, because it is obviously not claiming to be. Having said that, we shouldn’t forget that in his final speech, Brigance did tell the jury that the psych doctor (who gave evidence in support of Carl) who was charged with statutory rape in his past, had actually been innocent as the girl was 17, on top of which he married her and had kids with her. This would make him not a felon and his statement that Carl was insane at the time he committed the murder entirely credible. So who knows, maybe the jury agreed Carl was insane and acquitted him based on that alone.

In any case, it is made clear that this is an emotional drama that seeks a truth that sometimes real logical justice does not provide. It deals with heavy subject matter such as racism because racism hurts people emotionally and so is a perfect way or pulling the audience in, and if it’s done its job then you should have shed a few tears (or more) at the conclusion of it