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GiveMeYourBaby

A Time to Kill (1996)

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Catoonishly racist thugs rape and attempt to kill Samuel Jackson's daughter, in response Jackson shoots them dead in the court house. Matthew McConaughey is his lawyer  The majority of the movie revolves around McConaughey establishing an insanity defense that makes no sense.

Here's a list of bonkers things that happen as part of the movie:

  • At one point as part of a C-plot the NAACP is framed as a villain.
  • Kevin Spacey plays a young version of Francis Underwood
  • McConaughey, ostensibly the hero of the movie, drives drunk multiple times.
  • Sandy Bullocks appears as a Northern white savior for McConaughey's Southern white savior
  • There is a very dumb running joke about McConaughey mispronouncing the name "Roark" as "Ro-ark".
  • Instead of running away from a bomb planted at his his house McConaughey picks it up, thereby triggering the explosive, and chucks it just far enough away that no one gets hurt. 
  • As the only lawyer in a struggling legal practice McConaughey has somehow racked up a $2,000 electric bill in 1996 dollars.
  • Multiple people are almost murdered as part of the KKK protests of the trial and no one suggests that they move the trial.
  • Sam Jackson definitely killed those guys and doesn't have a real defense.
  • Oliver Platt's hair and extraneous character
  • McConaughey goes temporarily insane when he thinks his dog has been blown up.
  • People keep referencing how "there hasn't been any Klan in [Mississippi town where the movie takes place] for years." As though Klan members in other parts of Mississippi couldn't easily show up there. 
  • There's a D-plot about a Klan member that's secretly a good guy that never goes anywhere other than him giving McConaughey a head's up when they plan on blowing up his house, etc.
  • A big chunk of the defense rests on the concept that a key witness is not really a statutory rapist if she was 17 and he was only 6 six years older than her. (Did Roy Moore write this movie)
  • McConaughey gives a big speech about the assault on Jackson's daughter and ends it with "now imagine she's white", as though the audience couldn't have empathy with a non-white child victim until McConaughey pointed it out.
  • The ending credit music is  a gospel choir. 

The subject matter may make this too dark for HDTGM but if you told me the guy that made Batman & Robin also made a movie about race relations, this is more perfect than anything I could imagine. 

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On 2/21/2021 at 7:20 PM, GiveMeYourBaby said:

 

  • McConaughey gives a big speech about the assault on Jackson's daughter and ends it with "now imagine she's white", as though the audience couldn't have empathy with a non-white child victim until McConaughey pointed it out.
  •  

Not only are there people who wouldn't have empathy until McConaughey pointed it out, there are people who would continue to not have empathy even after he pointed it out.

One of many reasons this would be a thoroughly depressing choice for them to cover this movie on this podcast, despite its mixed reviews. 

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