The Chamber is easily the worst of John Grisham's badly written, wonderfully plotted, easily digestible, easily forgotten thrillers. It's no surprise, then, that of all of the Grisham adaptations to hit the screen, it's the only one to totally flop at the box office.

The principle flaw is one of story. In this respect, Grisham is both the perpetrator and the victim, it strikes me. The book and the film would love to just be a complicated anti-death penalty polemic with a character study at its heart. But Grisham must have known that had he written that story, he would have been critically chided and probably alienated much of his fan base. So instead, The Chamber also masquerades as a legal thriller even though nothing interesting happens involving the law and nothing particularly thrilling happens. Because of the clumsy plot around it, the character study gets a bit lost in the mix. Lots of things keep happening, but when you get to the ending, you realize how meaningless the entire narrative was. Grisham developed the characters, but his story leaves them stranded.

We begin with 26 year-old Chicago attorney Adam Hall (Chris O'Donnell). He's trying to convince the partner of his law firm to let him go down to Mississippi to handle the final appeals in a death penalty case involving a 1960s bombing of a civil rights lawyer's office that left two children dead. The partner doesn't understand why the young associate would want to take on this lost cause. But Hall explains — the man on death row is his grandfather (Gene Hackman). Hall goes down to Jackson and discovers that the political establishment is set on executing his grandfather, but one of the governor's aides (Lela Rochon) is assigned to help him. Hall meets his grandfather and discovers that the old man is every bit as racist and bitter as he feared. He also learns of his family's long history with the Klan and of a number of secrets that led to his father's suicide. And as the execution date approaches, Hall begins to learn even more secrets, which could get him in trouble with al the wrong people.

Or else, maybe not. All of the investigation sections of the film have a rote quality. There's the old FBI man who says he won't help them, but eventually does. There are the files that nobody can get access to that may contain important information. And then there's the relationship between O'Donnell and Rochon that goes nowhere at all. It's striking how uninvolving every aspect of the film's plot is. And it's also striking how bad an attorney O'Donnell seems to be. In 28 days, he does no effective legal work at all involving his grandfather's case. His final pleas and appeals defy any kind of legal logic and one wonders why he had to spend time in Mississippi if he was just gonna phone the whole thing in. There are two uninteresting encounters with the Klan that don't fully develop.

The Chamber marks yet another odd failure in the strange directing career of James Foley. Foley is one of my favorite directors, oddly, because he generally marks even bad genre films with his personal stamp. Foley has directed two very good movies — the Christopher Walken/ Sean Penn heartland drama At Close Range and the great Mamet film Glengarry Glen Ross. He's also directed a couple fun genre efforts like Fear and After Dark, My Sweet. And then he was responsible for The Corruptor and Who's That Girl. To call Foley erratic would be kind and yet I keep watching his films looking for kernels of talent even amongst trash.

And I simply can't believe that the version of The Chamber that's on screen (and video and DVD) is the movie that Foley set out to make. I have no evidence of any producer wrong-doing except that The Chamber is totally devoid of Foley's typical visual style and his always excellent ability to set mood. I have to assume that Foley was brought to this project by the chance to make a geographically specific story of intergenerational conflict. That's what At Close Range is and that's what The Chamber is at heart.

But for the most part The Chamber has been drained of the local color that Foley usually handles so well. I largely grew up in Mississippi, so this is a region I take personally, but beyond some nice establishing shots of Jackson and of Parchman (the Mississippi Penitentary), The Chamber feels canned. All too much of the film is shot in close-ups and it's rare that the actors share the same frame. This is a drawback in a film that's supposed to be about character relationships.

The presence of Chris O'Donnell in the lead is another problem. O'Donnell actually isn't objectionable here, but he's not a good enough actor to overcome just how blandly his character is written. He's also not good enough to play scenes opposite stronger actors like Hackman and Faye Dunaway. O'Donnell is bland, so the less measured performances, like Dunaway's wailing alcoholic become wildly over-the-top in comparison. The supporting actors all have variable Southern accents and there's not a single true moment or performance among them.

This puts the entire film on Hackman's shoulders. And he does what he can, largely because he's a remarkable actor. He's, in fact, the only actor who could pull off the third act contrition that his character is required by convention to go through. Hackman doesn't do any kind of Southern accent, really, and this is a major drawback, but it also prevents him from making a fool of himself. Mostly he lets his eyes act for him and the performance becomes better and better as the film progresses. His is the one interesting character in the movie.

The ideas, though, are all in the right place. They're just not well enough realized. The film tries to explore the impact of a legacy of hatred on successive generations in a Southern family. It hints around notions of how much power innate human nature has to overcome the evil of those who came before. The Chamber doesn't go anywhere with these ideas, but raising them is admirable. The film's anti-death penalty credentials are also in good evidence. There's much talk about cruel and unusual punishment and there's are graphic depictions of the gas chamber and what goes on within — both verbal and visual depictions. You wish that this ideology had a better platform, but screenwriters William Goldman and Chris Reese have their hands tied. If a master of story structure like Goldman can't rescue The Chamber from its source material, it couldn't be done. What you're left with is a film that does a lot of talking, but offers no action.

Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: VHS
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age