Back in 1998, Peter Howitt scored a surprise hit with Sliding Doors. For viewers on the British side of the Atlantic, the reaction was pretty much, "What? Joey from Bread directed this?" It was a step up to the big time for Howitt with a rom-com that was reasonably inventive, stood up to repeated viewings and showed promise for a new director on the block.
What happened? The sixteen years since has seen a steady decline culminating in the dull thud that is Reasonable Doubt. Credited here as Peter A. Croudins, perhaps Howitt changed his name in embarrassment. Good. It's warranted.
Mitch Brockden (Dominic Cooper) is a district attorney who, after a night out with the boys, climbs into his SUV and mows down a pedestrian. Mitch panics, anonymously phones the ambulance and then runs. The cops pick up good Samaritan Clinton Davis (Samuel L. Jackson) who claims to have seen the victim and decided to rush him to the hospital in his van rather than wait for the ambulance. The trouble is Detective Blake Kanon (Gloria Rueben) and her team reckon the corpse's injuries could have been caused with a hammer, there were no witnesses, Davis has a history and Brockden isn't about to come clean.
Reasonable Doubt is plinky plonk cinema. It is contrived from the outset and, bar the shift after the first twenty minutes or so when a new chapter opens up, it is predictable, badly thought out, obvious and completely unbelievable. Reuben is still playing Jeanie Boulet. She hasn't managed to shake off ER and adopt the persona of a detective with serious, violent crimes to investigate.
Worse, Cooper is lost with an accent that has consumed his attentions rather than concentrating on acting. What happened to the actor who thrilled and terrified in The Devil's Double? He is flaccid and unconvincing and, though I suppose I should despise Mitch for his cowardliness and root for him when events turn, I just don't care.
As for Jackson, can you say "just coasting"?
There are duller, worse films than Reasonable Doubt, but I wouldn't recommend them either. It is supposed to thrill but is a thriller that is so protracted, so damn convenient and so heavily flawed (people arriving but no sound of a car, characters running to save lives rather than driving and increasing their chances of success
) that it bores. The conclusion is too tidy and the postscript ending is sickeningly twee and can't even be bothered to give consequences for the criminal acts of those left standing.
Reasonable Doubt is twaddle that earns two stars simply because it caused me less pain that Noah. Murder has rarely been so unreasonably dull.
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