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Waste of time

Just what I expected

Great Film overall

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

I thought the movie was good, but felt all the leading characters (with the exception of Armand Assante as the mob boss) were badly miscast. One of the essential elements of the plot was the mob boss's obsession for the juror, because he had a thing for classy women who looked like movie stars from the 1940s. Although Joanne Whalley is an excellent actress and always a beautiful on-screen presence, I don't feel she fit the 1940s mold, and didn't seem to have much on-screen chemistry with Assante. Another actress such as Kim Basinger (in a pre-LA Confidential Veronica Lake type of performance) might have made that plot element more believable. William Hurt was also miscast as the crooked cop. After seeing Tom Berenger in "Breaking Point" he would have been a much better choice. Gabriel Byrne and Kathleen Quinlan's roles could have been played by Treat Williams and Kelly Preston. Other than the casting of the lead actors, I liked the look of the film (photography, set design, costumes, etc.) and enjoyed watching it. I thought it was a much better film than "The Juror" (with Demi Moore and Alec Baldwin) that had a similar theme and was released the same year.

More often that not, I'll call a movie overrated, but this one, I think, is underrated. It features solid acting and a very involving story. There isn't as much violence as most modern-day crime movies and that's fine because this story doesn't need it. The profanity is also lower-than-normal. All that's missing is better cinematography.Joanne Whalley-Kilmer, Armand Assante, Gabirel Byrne and William Hurt all make this interesting and provide good performances. This is a good attention-diverting movie that is a good "date movie," too. It's tense without a ton of the usual overdone violence and profanity.

In New York, Valerie Alston (Joanne Whalley-Kilmer) is a single woman, who has a small son and is the owner of a store of clothes. She is convoked to participate of the jury of the trial of the mobster Rusty Pirone (Armand Assante), who will be judged for several murders. In the eve, the key witness of the prosecutor Daniel Graham (Gabriel Byrne) was executed with the four police officers that were protecting him by Pirone's men. Meanwhile, the ex-cop Tommy Vesey (William Hurt), who also works for Pirone, threatens Valerie, menacing to kill her son if she does not claim that Pirone is not guilty. "Trial by Jury" is not a bad movie, but it could have been a great film-noir. The first three-quarters of the story are indeed excellent. But there are two weaknesses in this film: the first one is the performance of Joanne Whalley-Kilmer. The character of Valerie lives a terrible dramatic dilemma and a very conflictive situation between her consciousness and the request of the mobster, and demanded a more expressive actress. Unfortunately, Joanne Whalley-Kilmer keeps the same expression in the most different situations along the story. The second weak point is the conclusion of the story, which is too much "Hollywoodian" to be credible. Anyway, this film is a good entertainment. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Tribunal Sob Suspeita" ("Tribunal Under Suspicion")

It´s long time that I and my wife didn´t see such a boring thriller. It´s definitively NOT a gripping story and it is paced so slowly that we nearly fell asleep. This could be instead a very low budget TV crime series. There are some ridiculous scenes like the one where mafia boss Pirano wants to see the jury lady in a red clothes or another mafioso cannot stop to think about her and so on. Okay perhaps this should have been a romantic thriller but believe me you really don´t miss anything. We gave 4/10.