The Star Chamber

Hyams was a gifted director of fluid and exciting action at the mercy of his often stupid scripts. This occasionally comes alive at the moments you'd expect, but the cool paranoid set-up's no match for the contrived predictable construction. And bogus characters. It's one thing for a grieving father to personally attack a judge as soft on crime for reluctantly following the letter of the law, quite another for a veteran detective, at least one that we're not supposed to write off as an idiot.

Good Michael Douglas movie.

I liked the movie, but it squandered a lot of potential. The story-telling on the law enforcement side and the legal side worked well. It really made the story feel more complete, but just as the viewer is buying in, somebody decides the movie is running too long and the characters make a hard turn. There's also a lot of legal stuff in here which even the layman knows is inaccurate and tries a bit to stretch to fit the plot.

I'm not a fan of Lawyer/Judge as action hero type set-ups and this was really cheesy.

Solid first half, disappointing ending. It's a great concept for a thriller though. A remake would be welcome.

This actually a tight thriller with good performances and unexpectedly interesting cinematography.

Too politically correct, no intrigue.

Things I enjoyed: Yaphet Kotto, the action sequences, the cinematography--which is way above average, the freaky dude who played Monk in this. Problems.... The writing is just stupid. Seriously--the car thief "loans" these guys the van for a few hours, yet they have it the entire film. When he "gets it back" it has the bloody shoe in it, even though they were arrested and that shoe was surely taken by the cops, seeing as it was the central piece of evidence in the murder trial.

Largely underwhelming thriller about injustices. One of those movies with tons of potential and very little delivery.

Pretty good.